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It's Official: HTML5 Is a W3C Standard

rjmarvin (3001897) writes The Worldwide Web Consortium today has elevated the HTML5 specification to 'recommendation' status , giving it the group's highest level of endorsement, which is akin to becoming a standard. The W3C also introduced Application Foundations with the announcement of the HTML5 recommendation to aid developers in writing Web applications, and said the organization is working with patents holders of the H.264 codec to agree on a baseline royalty-free interoperability level commitment.

75 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Well, that's cool I guess by halivar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But it's already a de facto standard. I think W3C's clout in this area is diminished because the market already decided it was a standard long before they did.

    1. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by tuffy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Turning de facto standards that have been implemented in actual browsers into a formal specification is how standards work best.

      Coming up with a specification first and hoping someone will be able to implement it is how we wound up with Perl 6.

      --

      Ita erat quando hic adveni.

    2. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by cloud.pt · · Score: 2

      Your'e not giving enough credit to the organization that enabled you to write comments that look this c o o l

    3. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Don't blame the W3C for the fact that "the market" took so long to implement HTML5 support. This news is about the W3C standard being upgraded to "recommendation" status, which happens only after web browsers finally adopt it.

    4. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by i+kan+reed · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, there's a steaming pile of ignorance there.

      1. Almost all serious websites are xhtml compliant. That's because being compliant is good for any bots crawling the site.
      2. Do you imagine that all the HTML5 support that already exists came from nowhere? It was browser devs implementing the pre-reccomendations for HTML5 as a good idea. If the no one "gives a damn" about w3c, you'd find Chrome and Firefox behaving very differently with how they implemented next-gen UI elements.
      3. Just use jquery or something, sheesh. No one needs to manually fiddle with DOM anymore.

    5. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      1. Really? Because I see a lot of <br> and NOT <br/> tags in source these days.

    6. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by NotDrWho · · Score: 2

      Turning de facto standards that have been implemented in actual browsers into a formal specification is how standards work best.

      It's funny, back in the day all everyone did on /. was bitch and moan every time MS implemented anything in IE that wasn't W3C standard. Now that it's not THE EVIL MICROSOFT doing it, suddenly everyone is all "FUCK W3C!!!"

      --
      SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    7. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by i+kan+reed · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'm not sure slashdot counts as serious.

    8. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by nine-times · · Score: 1

      IIRC, HTML5 had problems getting motion in the first place because the major vendors were having trouble playing nice. W3C made a decision to step back and let them work it out, in the understanding that they'd step back in when a standard emerged.

    9. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by Anonymous+Psychopath · · Score: 1

      This is more or less how technology standards work. Would you say the IEEE has no clout because manufacturers ship hardware while the standard is still in draft?

      --

      Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

    10. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by brunes69 · · Score: 1

      The difference is, when Apple and Google and Mozilla do something, they are seldom working in a vaccum. They work together for the most part on emerging web technologies and push them forward. There are a few outliers like HTML5 video where there is a lot of vested interest, but if you look at it objectively, this is nowhere near the EEE mantra of Microsoft.

    11. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 3, Insightful

      > Just use jquery or something, sheesh. No one needs to manually fiddle with DOM anymore.

      Don't get me wrong. I'm not agains jQuery. It serves a useful purpose. HOWEVER, yeah, like I have better things to do then debug that unholy-mess called jQuery.

      There is a time to manipulate DOM with small, simple, fast Javascript. And a time to use a more heavyweight solution.

    12. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Lets not forget where XmlHttpRequest came from...

    13. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, to put that into perspective ... Microsoft used to sit on standards boards, and before the standard was finalized they'd file submarine patents, and do their own implementation which was already not compliant and had proprietary extensions.

      So, when Microsoft was doing it, it really was evil ... ha ha ha, thanks for telling us how to implement this, now we've patented it, and we're already extending it for our own purposes.

      There were a bunch of years where Microsoft never found a standard they couldn't completely fsck up for their own interests.

      Microsoft used to do it to shit on the standards process and give themselves something which didn't work with anything else -- because Microsoft didn't want standards to succeed. If it wasn't theirs, it needed to be destroyed.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    14. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by tuffy · · Score: 1

      Browsers pushing stuff outside the standard may have given us the and tags, but it also gave us the tag. The good thing about having a standards body is that it can incorporate the useful stuff into the next standard while (hopefully) relegating the junk to permanent outcast status.

      --

      Ita erat quando hic adveni.

    15. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      But there is not an official standard to point to when your least favorite browser isn't rendering properly.

      The neat thing about following a standard, is you get standard results.

      --
      If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
    16. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by CrashNBrn · · Score: 1
      If only Microsoft had of gotten its way 15 years ago, we would of had:

      {
      width:21px;
      padding:5px;
      margin:5px;
      border: 1px solid black;
      }
      Where the total width is what you say it is: 21px. Instead we have the stupidity that the actual width is 32px. and paddings, margins et al ADD to the defined width instead of being a part of the element. Which makes calculating dimensions in HTML a fucking pain in the ass.

    17. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by KingMotley · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Please show an example where Microsoft sat on a standards body and then patented something regarding that spec, because as much as you'd like to believe this is true, it simply isn't. You have this backwards. Microsoft often had patents relating to things they sat on a standards body for (much like everyone else on that committee), and in most cases had already implemented a version of it before the committee was formed, let alone ratified anything. In some cases, they implemented something that was being discussed prior to ratification (which takes years), and then the standards body changed their minds and made changes to the standard before ratifying it. And in other cases, Microsoft implemented functionality that was already prevalent in the marketplace (another companies work -- usually netscape), and the standards body came up with a different, incompatible solution to the same thing.

      If you have an example (any example) of what you say, I'd like to hear it, because I've never found any evidence of it, yet.

    18. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by gsnedders · · Score: 2

      On the other hand, the W3C Patent Policy makes it impossible for MS to do that --- they must either disclose their patents and notify the group that they are withholding them from the royalty-free grant within 180 days of certain points of the spec's development or they grant all members of the group an irrevocable RF grant (the intention of the policy is you give a list of all patents you have covering the spec and whether you're withholding them; in practice most people don't even look at patent portfolios because they know they'd just give an RF grant for any it covers and hence it's not worth the time looking).

    19. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

      { box-sizing:border-box; width:21px; padding:5px; margin:5px; border:1px solid black; }

      Doesn't include the margins (none of the options do), but your bordered box will be 21 pixels wide (inclusive of borders). box-sizing:padding-box; makes it 21 pixels excluding borders.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    20. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by CrashNBrn · · Score: 1
      Thanks, I forgot about that. At least it wasn't added to the "display" property. And there's less need for browser specific css extensions:

      -webkit-box-sizing: border-box; /* Safari/Chrome, other WebKit */
      -moz-box-sizing: border-box; /* Firefox, other Gecko */

    21. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by ultranova · · Score: 2

      Where the total width is what you say it is: 21px. Instead we have the stupidity that the actual width is 32px. and paddings, margins et al ADD to the defined width instead of being a part of the element. Which makes calculating dimensions in HTML a fucking pain in the ass.

      What happens if the total width you declare is less than the combined width of paddings, margins and borders? Which seems likely, if addition is such a "pain in the ass" for you, especially when CSS inheritance rules come to play.

      Also, as a user, I say this: the harder it's for HTML "programmers" to specify element sizes - especially in pixels - the harder it is for you to make a layout that breaks on any configuration you didn't expect (which would be almost all of them), which in turn makes things better for me.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    22. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by Wraithlyn · · Score: 4, Informative

      Sorry, but the steaming pile of ignorance is yours.

      > 1. Almost all serious websites are xhtml compliant.

      Um, bullshit? Want to try backing that up with something? A random sampling of cnn.com, google news, apple.com, Facebook, Youtube, and LinkedIn shows they all use HTML5 doctype. And here's a graph showing XHTML's continuous decline as it dies a well deserved death.

      > 2. Do you imagine that all the HTML5 support that already exists came from nowhere? It was browser devs implementing the pre-reccomendations for HTML5

      No, it was browser devs (WHATWG, as the GP correctly pointed out) ignoring the W3C's strict XHTML idiocy and opting for a saner route.

      The WHATWG was formed in response to the slow development of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web standards and W3C's decision to abandon HTML in favor of XML-based technologies.

      - Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...

      We got HTML5 despite the W3C, not thanks to them.

      --
      "Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
    23. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It sounds like a good idea, but reality seems to say otherwise.
      Going native means breaking interoperability. Which is the main streght of the web. So no chance in hell.
      You can do that using an ActiveX control; you can create an entire web with one. It would be fully native, that's for sure. Not that I recommend it.

      If you don't want to go so far, you can use some kind of virtual machine, It has been done for at least 20 years. We call it Java applets. Some people tried to create entire web pages with them. Nobody liked nor visited them. Nowadays, Java in the browser is nearly dead. Yuck. Another option is Silverlight, or WPF in the browser. Double yuck.

      You can use some kind of plugin to deliver your content in some kind of binary or not so binary blob. There have been a bunch of those. Flash or Shockwave, for example. They have some success in ancient times, nowadays nobody wants to get near them. HTML5 killed them. Steve Jobs was an accomplice.

      So judging from the past, the more farther you go from HTML+JS to the metal, the worst failure you will meet. And I'll add this for free: it will be fully deserved.

    24. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by Euler · · Score: 2

      Paper standards are worthless 9 times out of 10; typically they are full of ambiguity or have stipulations that are grossly inefficient to implement. There is a necessary research phase to writing airtight, or even usable specs. I call this 'implementation.' So yes, de-facto specifications are the best. You could do the research phase and just throw away the resulting code and test results, but why do that? So the only use I have for a standards body is to perform quality-control on the existing documentation.

      RFC's are a good model: you invent something - then just document it and let people file their complaints. But it is not open for general blue-sky speculation.

    25. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by Cruxus · · Score: 1

      The sweet spot is the XHTML syntax of HTML5; it gets you the advantages of using all your existing XML tooling and strict conformance checking with modern HTML5 web app support.

      --
      On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
    26. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by mtbink.com · · Score: 1

      the same company that invented .innerHTML :P

    27. Re: Well, that's cool I guess by KingMotley · · Score: 1

      Asking for some example is considered a shill? I guess we don't need things like facts any more. Let's just make stuff up and call it undeniable truth.

    28. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      Shill for Microsoft much?

      Can't you just answer the question?

    29. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by MoarSauce123 · · Score: 1

      Yes, and no. The market took what was available for HTML5 and as before implemented it in various interpretations making the rendering engines and browsers behave differently in so many areas that it makes a mockery of a standard. There is currently not a single browser available that fully supports HTML5 and CSS3. I test web apps and it just sucks that after passing all tests in Chrome a bunch of them fail in Firefox and half of them fail in IE and then Safari on OS X is totally different again. The sole point of a standard is that anything coded to standard will yield IDENTICAL results on any standards compliant browser. Sadly, coding to standard will cause code to break in most current browsers. Also, HTML5 standard as it is right now leaves too much up to the implementers, like the fuzzy rules about what to do with password fields and autocomplete. As a developer I can set password fields not to be considered for autocomplete because there are significant security risks with storing passwords in shared environments, yet none of the browsers honor this directive in favor of pushing their own password manager. And that by default and with no means to turn it off. I understand the desire to give the user the power to decide, but in some cases the user does not understand or does understand, but doesn't care. Pushing security decisions always to the user is just too cheap. There are plenty other examples. Also, the tug of war over the video encoding to be used ending in what some for profits want. There is no reason to include a licensed or potentially licenseable technology in an open standard. For these reasons I agree that the W3C's clout is diminished, especially when the market now needs clear guidance on what HTML6 and CSS4 will be.

    30. Re:Well, that's cool I guess by MoarSauce123 · · Score: 1

      Sites are HTML5 compatible, not compliant! HTML5 compliance will cause many things to not work in current browsers.

  2. Updating by Roodvlees · · Score: 1

    It's so sad that some are still stuck on older versions of IE (South Korea).
    Especially when there are two free and better alternatives...
    A customer of my company now want's us to make an app we made working for IE 9 :(

    --
    Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
    1. Re:Updating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I's it an app that add's erroneou's apo'strophe's to word's?

    2. Re: Updating by AvitarX · · Score: 2

      I think it also had to do with export restrictions, so they implemented encryption using activex before said restrictions were loosened.

      Into the 90s (late even I think) useful encryption couldn't be exported much from the US.

      --
      Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
  3. Java's demise by Kokuyo · · Score: 2

    One can only hope more appliance producers will ditch Java for HTML5 web interfaces... configuring SAN switches has become a freaking pain in the butt.

    1. Re:Java's demise by aethelrick · · Score: 1

      Not being a SAN appliance user myself, I'm curious to know what form of Java are you encountering? If they have a Java config application you install on your PC, then it sounds like they have a crappy UI and my guess is that a language change won't help them program a better one. If however they are serving up a Java applet from an embedded server within the appliance then I guess they could use an update because the last time I saw an applet in the wild I fell off my stegosaurus in shock.

    2. Re:Java's demise by 2fuf · · Score: 1

      Yeah totally, imagine: having to fire up a 10 year old VirtualPC to run the outdated OS that runs the outdated browser that uses the outdated Javascript engine to configure your switch. What an improvement over Java that will be :-)

  4. WHY THE LINK ISN'T WORKING by rjmarvin · · Score: 4, Informative

    The W3C was unclear about the embargo time for the news, and as a result the story has been pulled for the moment. It will be live again at 10am PST/1pm EST.

    1. Re:WHY THE LINK ISN'T WORKING by jeffb+(2.718) · · Score: 4, Funny

      If they're actually specifying the embargo time in Eastern or Pacific Standard Time, even though most of the US remains on Daylight Saving Time until Sunday Nov 2, the confusion may last a bit longer than they expect.

      I love the way the link leads to a "sorry we can't find it, here are some suggestions..." page, with the first suggestion being the very same link, which produces the very same result. Okay, maybe I was looking for an error page.

  5. It's Official: HTML5 Is a W3C Standard by null+etc. · · Score: 3, Funny

    That was fast.

  6. Not found. by jafuser · · Score: 2

    The article is 404'd and I'm not seeing any other news of this. Did someone jump the gun? The w3c page still says "proposed recommendation".

    --
    Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
  7. Who cares about the W3C by bazmail · · Score: 1

    They are always the last to recognize standards. Everyone else has moved on. The W3C is run like a government bureaucracy, too slow, no real-world pressures on them to up the pace, and no accountability. Who gives a shit what they elevate or recognize any more.

    1. Re:Who cares about the W3C by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Uh. No standard written by the W3C is final until there are at least two complete implementations in browsers. In addition, the W3C is composed of all the browser vendors who also write those standards.

    2. Re:Who cares about the W3C by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Wrong. The File API is not attached to the HTML5 standard which is what this announcement would be about.

    3. Re:Who cares about the W3C by bazmail · · Score: 1

      Uh No. Sure Google and MS etc have seats on the board, but it does not consist entirely of browser vendors.

    4. Re:Who cares about the W3C by diamondmagic · · Score: 1

      HTML5 isn't an operating system, it's a markup language.

      File API is a different specification: http://www.w3.org/TR/FileAPI/

      You're welcome.

  8. May whatever god you believe in... by bosef1 · · Score: 1

    have mercy on your soul.

  9. Windows Vista by tepples · · Score: 1

    Everything that can run IE 9 should be able to run IE 11/12, whatever the current versions is, I think.

    To upgrade past IE 9 on Windows Vista, you have to either buy a newer version of Windows or switch to Firefox or Chrome.

    1. Re:Windows Vista by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      To upgrade past IE 9 on Windows Vista, you have to either buy a newer version of Windows or switch to Firefox or Chrome

      LOL ... strictly speaking, that's not "past IE 9 on Windows Vista".

      That's "past Vista".

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  10. W3C's clout: they can keep DRM outside by ciaran2014 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    W3C still has an important role: they're the standards body.

    We've been telling governments for years to use open standards and HTML is often held up as a shining example. A lot of governments have even made commitments to using open standards but if W3C announces that DRM is part of HTML, then governments will accept DRM and they'll think/claim they're doing what we asked with regard to open standards.

    So we need to keep telling W3C that we don't want DRM in HTML. And when W3C says "Oh, but Netflix really wants DRM", we just reply that this doesn't require blessing from W3C.

    FSF is almost the only organisation campaigning on this: https://www.defectivebydesign....

    --
    Help build the anti-software-patent wiki
  11. Video rental by tepples · · Score: 1

    Without some form of digital restrictions management, how is movie rental supposed to work? Or is there some other way to keep end users from teeing the video into a copy that remains usable longer than the agreed-upon rental period?

    1. Re:Video rental by AikonMGB · · Score: 2

      Let me fix that for you: why is movie rental supposed to work? Just because a business model made sense at one point for a particular medium does that mean that it will continue to do so moving forward, nor that artificial restrictions should be placed on innovation to force existing business models to soldier on.

    2. Re:Video rental by tepples · · Score: 1

      SIP can handle any key negotiation that could be performed by a client app.

      For which platform would this client app be developed? Not everybody who wants to offer a video for rental has the resources to develop 15 different client apps and negotiate with Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony for inclusion in their respective app stores.

    3. Re:Video rental by tepples · · Score: 1

      For movies other than cult classics and children's animated movies, I imagine that most people prefer to watch a movie only once, not multiple times for the indefinite future. People don't want to buy stuff anymore. So just to make sure I don't misunderstand your post, let me restate it in my own words: In the interest of eliminating digital restrictions management, you expect people to pay full price to buy a durable copy even if they want to watch it only once. Do I understand you correctly?

    4. Re:Video rental by tilk · · Score: 1

      Right now there is no difference between a "durable copy", as you say, than just watching - in both cases exactly the same data needs to go between the service provider and the end user. Therefore there is no longer a need to distinguish the two, and anything else is just crippling the product - a questionable practice for physical items, but somehow okay for digital data.

      A message for the media companies: just let me pay for the damn file! I'm probably going to only watch it once, but if I do not, you should not care anyway.

    5. Re:Video rental by Xtifr · · Score: 1

      Without some form of digital restrictions management, how is movie rental supposed to work?

      DRM currently works without being part of the HTML standard. (See, e.g., Netflix.) Why would not including it in a newer version of the HTML standard suddenly make it stop working?

    6. Re:Video rental by ultranova · · Score: 1

      For movies other than cult classics and children's animated movies, I imagine that most people prefer to watch a movie only once, not multiple times for the indefinite future.

      If this is true, then there's no real reason to worry about someone cluttering their hard drive with video files they're never going to watch again, now is there?

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    7. Re:Video rental by tepples · · Score: 1

      Movie studios have traditionally price discriminated, offering a limited viewing window at a lower price than an indefinite window.

    8. Re:Video rental by ultranova · · Score: 1

      Movie studios have traditionally price discriminated, offering a limited viewing window at a lower price than an indefinite window.

      Which, according to yourself, are the exact same product as far as the consumer is concerned. Either those gosh darn pirates keep defenseless widdle DRM-free rentals forever so they don't have to shell out for a "durable copy" or it's extremely important that rentals exist because people don't want to watch movies more than once (altough it's still unclear why video rentals should be a concern for Web standards, seeing how rental stores can and probably should simply deliver such precious content through some proprietary program rather than assume various third-party ones honour their wishes). You can't have it both ways.

      Not that any of this matters, since anyone so inclined will simply break any DRM or just grab the content from Pirate Bay. At this point copyright law has all the credibility and respectability communism has in the former DDR.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    9. Re:Video rental by Rakarra · · Score: 1

      Therefore there is no longer a need to distinguish the two, and anything else is just crippling the product

      Copyright has always been about crippling what the non-copyright-holder can do with a product. That's its entire purpose, and has been that way for hundreds of years. It's not new compared to digital media.

    10. Re:Video rental by tepples · · Score: 1

      Please quit with the ad hominems and state what in my post makes me "a technically illiterate shitheel."

    11. Re: Video rental by tepples · · Score: 1

      I thought the "encryption" in WebRTC was to keep eavesdroppers from saving a stream, not to keep the subscriber from saving a stream.

  12. The old and the new. (H.265/HEVC) by westlake · · Score: 1

    Clocks ticking MPEG LA. What are you going to do in 2016?

    The 50" 4K UHD TV is at Walmart, starting at $1300. MPEG LA has moved on.

    1. Re:The old and the new. (H.265/HEVC) by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 1

      at 30" I'm going to need a much bigger desk.

      I can't wait for those ridiculously high DPI panels to scale up. I want a 21" 4k display at 120 Hz.

      I also want a pony.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  13. Where's the schema (DTD/XML Schema/Relax NG)? by oever · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Where's the schema (DTD/XML Schema/Relax NG)?

    Answer: there is no schema. Validating documents seems to have gone out of fashion. Writing a parser for HTML5 is extremely difficult. Basically the broken parsing behavior of old browsers is now standardized in a crazy arcane description of how to parse HTML5 documents.

    http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/syn...

    Who benefits from such crazy parsing rules? The current browsers. This raises the bar for entry.

    --
    DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
    1. Re:Where's the schema (DTD/XML Schema/Relax NG)? by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 2

      Actually the current browsers have a lot to lose with crazy parsing rules. Lots of edge cases, writing lots of nasty hacks to get around various markup bugs...

      Even it does mean higher bar of entry, the bar's pretty high anyway because even if we did have schema parsing, the render piece really is the hard part.

      Who does this benefit? Lazy crappy godawful web developers.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
    2. Re:Where's the schema (DTD/XML Schema/Relax NG)? by DarkOx · · Score: 2

      Who benefits from such crazy parsing rules?

      But so do end users who want to view existing pages and anyone with existing pages but perhaps not terribly well designed and implemented web pages / applications.

      There is so much tag soup out there, its hard to image some new schema validating strict rendering browser being very useful out side of the leading ecom sites. The fact is lots of really valuable information is still sitting around on home pages at universities and elsewhere on personal blogs etc that is a mess of barely parse-able tags; yet todays browsers by and large to a fabulous job presenting those documents all things considered.

      A new clean standard and an new clean reference browser to go with it might be great for buying airline tickets, and ordering widgets but we would give up so much.

      Why do think there was such an effort to mirror geocities? There was a lot of interesting things there long forgotten by many and their original owners in amongst the chaff. Not sure we want to say goodby to that history.

      --
      Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
    3. Re:Where's the schema (DTD/XML Schema/Relax NG)? by spiralx · · Score: 1

      But it's easier to parse HTML5 than it was any previous version of HTML, as there is now an actual specification which details the process exactly rather than relying on each browser's interpretation. It can't be that difficult given the number of working parsers and validators out there for HTML5.

      Plus, HTML5 can already be written using XML syntax, aka XHTML5. And searching for xhtml5.xsd or xhtml5.rng gave me plenty of links to schemas for validating XML-syntax HTML5.

      If you need to store validated documents, then you shouldn't be storing them in HTML format! Store them as XML documents with well-defined schemas (Relax NG of course!), and then use XSLT or possibly XQuery to turn them into HTML fragments for display.

  14. Oops, 43px. by CrashNBrn · · Score: 1

    Damn, 43px, ( 21 + 5x2 + 5x2 + 1x2 ). See just plain bullshit.

  15. DRM (unfortunately) can exist without W3C blessing by ciaran2014 · · Score: 1

    > Without some form of digital restrictions management,
    > how is movie rental supposed to work?

    DRM can exist without W3C's blessing. The big players can even agree on a common interface without W3C's blessing.

    My previous comment wasn't about whether DRM should exist (in my opinion, it shouldn't), it was about W3C not needing to bless DRM and call it part of an "open standard".

    There's no contradiction in DRM-accepters supporting the campaign to get DRM removed from W3C's specifications of open standards.

    --
    Help build the anti-software-patent wiki
  16. Re:Not even remotely correct by qpqp · · Score: 2

    Kiddo, get off our lawn and RTFM. You ain't got a clue what the parent is talking about.

  17. Barrier to entry by tepples · · Score: 1

    Why would not including it in a newer version of the HTML standard suddenly make it stop working?

    It wouldn't stop working, but needing to develop new apps for multiple platforms currently acts as a barrier to entry to new video providers. Right now each video provider needs a separate app for each client platform, and each client platform needs a separate app for each video provider. This is a Cartesian product situation, which grows at O(n^2). If you have 15 platforms and 15 providers, you need 225 apps. Standardizing digital restrictions management for video would allow the use of one app on each platform.

    1. Re:Barrier to entry by Xtifr · · Score: 1

      It wouldn't stop working, but needing to develop new apps for multiple platforms currently acts as a barrier to entry to new video providers.

      That's a reasonable argument for standardizing encryption/DRM, but not a reasonable argument for making it part of the HTML standard. Rolling your own encryption is indeed a crappy idea, but the solution is to create an encryption/drm standard, rather than hijacking some only-vaguely-related standard and trying to cram it in there. Especially since encryption/drm needs to work with more than just html.

  18. any move in favour of the open web is a great one by adsyme · · Score: 1

    Great news! I'm a strong html5/javascript advocate. 6 months ago, I released a mobile WEB app to create mobile web apps (http://adsy.me). We've already signed up 22,300 users, a pretty nice proof of concept for an open web project, outside the native walled gardens. It works on ios/ANDROID/pc, a true cross-platform app. I believe it's the future, in a post-appstores era (here is a piece I wrote about this: https://medium.com/@adsy_me/7-...)

  19. Clean browser by FreedomFirstThenPeac · · Score: 1

    Meanwhile, I am toying with creating a pre-browser or embedded filter that removes all tags beyond what Slashdot permits, then feeds that reduced set to the display functions. I am sick and tired of trying to throttle back wacko behavior one fekking feature at a time. Or does such already exist (for Firefox or Chrome?)

    --
    "There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.