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It's Official: HTML5 Is a W3C Standard

Posted by timothy on from the well-that's-a-strong-word dept.

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.

7 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 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.

    3. 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
  2. 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.

  3. 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....

    --
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