HTML5 is dead long live....err... HTML?

[linkgoron]

I don't know if this is the place for this kind of discussion... But I was wondering what's your take on this?

http://blog.whatwg.org/html-is-the-new-html5/

<rant>

Seriously, this smells like a move from the WHATWG against W3C and their new HTML5 logo.

Either way, this is (IMO) a TERRIBLE idea. What's the point of a STANDARD if it isn't A STANDARD? This isn't some Ian Hickson toilet paper standard. This is the HTML standard!

Oh, and WTF is a LIVING STANDARD? What does that even mean? How can I validate my markup? Do I need to re-check my markup every day, because it might not be valid anymore?

This is IMO such a bad move, I hope this is some kind of joke.

</rant>

 

[BoberFett]

Big discussion over on /. about this. Stupid idea. Support is fractured enough as is, this will make it worse.

 

[Markbnj]

Nothing can screw up a good idea as thoroughly as a standards committee!

 

[insect9]

Nothing can screw up a good idea as thoroughly as a standards committee!

QFT.

 

[Train]

Part of the problem with HTML 5 is that all the browser makers are racing to implement it... years before its even due to be confirmed. A lot is still up to interpretation. So we will have varying implementations (with varying codecs too) which will force web devs to ONCE AGAIN, write browser specific code. sigh. Which is one of the main things html 5 was to eliminate.

The HTML5 commitee should do a spec lock NOW, anything not cleared up yet? Sorry, that goes in HTML 6

 

[wirednuts]

The HTML5 commitee should do a spec lock NOW, anything not cleared up yet? Sorry, that goes in HTML 6

at my job if we cant get a job done when it needs to be, we would get fired. im just sayin.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

So, once again 'web standards' is just so much rhetoric wrapped around a layer of B.S.

What on earth do they possibly hope to gain from this?

 

[Ka0t1x]

Honestly I don't really care about 'HTML5' anymore.. its more about what browser supports x feature. If Webkit/Mozilla support it, I roll it out. IE compliant costs money.

 

[TechBoyJK]

kinda makes sense to me

 

[airdata]

I heard that alot of porn sites are implementing html5 so people w\ iphones can view their sites.

 

[Cogman]

You know what I would love to see? I would love to see a tiered standard ALA AVC.

This, of course, would require the standards committee to get their crap together. None of this half way crap like they have been doing with CSS and HTML for the past couple of years, rather, decide on the standard THEN release it. Not release bits, pieces, and wishes for the standard and then bitch when browser writers implement those to be on top of the game.

What would this do? It would provide minimum functionality requirements for browser. For example, you could design your webpage to be HTML5.4 compliant, if a 5.1 browser comes through, you could either give them a different website, or a message "Sorry, your browser doesn't support the features necessary for this page."

You may think "oh, this would be terrible." but actually, it works quite nicely. In the encoding scene, you just have to look at the device and read with standard it supports. After that, you can instruct your encoder to follow Level whatever for this device and not worry about all the in's and outs of which function will work with which product.

Browsers would have to be tested for their compliance levels, and webpage makers would have some sane way to work with all browsers. Rather than having to have separate code for IE, Firefox, chrome, and safari. and all the hackery that goes along with it.

Alas the W3C has been messed up for so long that this will probably never happen. They'll keep on half putting out standards and we will see browser half implementing those standards. Leaving us with a quagmire of features that may or may not be supported on some browser. It is better to have known support than "Well, I developed that and it worked in firefox, but when I ran it in chrome it broke, I don't know why."

 

[linkgoron]

Part of the problem with HTML 5 is that all the browser makers are racing to implement it... years before its even due to be confirmed. A lot is still up to interpretation. So we will have varying implementations (with varying codecs too) which will force web devs to ONCE AGAIN, write browser specific code. sigh. Which is one of the main things html 5 was to eliminate.

The HTML5 commitee should do a spec lock NOW, anything not cleared up yet? Sorry, that goes in HTML 6

Well the HTML/5 WHATWG committee is made up from reps. from all of the big browser companies (except MS I think).

 

[Aluvus]

The W3C is going to continuing publishing "snapshot" versions as they always have, which are what people will actually rely on. This appears to really just affect the WHATWG's internal workings, which have always been somewhat idiosyncratic.

In other words, the world is not ending.

 

[Aluvus]

Part of the problem with HTML 5 is that all the browser makers are racing to implement it... years before its even due to be confirmed. A lot is still up to interpretation.

Conversely, one of the biggest problems with HTML and CSS have historically been that the standard was written and declared done before any implementation existed, which has led to some well-intentioned but severely divergent interpretations (for instance, IE5's box model). It's hard to say something is "wrong" when there is little or nothing to test it against, and these standards tend not to be very... intuitive.

So we will have varying implementations (with varying codecs too) which will force web devs to ONCE AGAIN, write browser specific code.

Despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth, it seems fairly obvious that the <video> tag implementations will eventually settle on a few common codecs, and we will have the same basic situation as with the <img> tag. There may be some pain at the outset, but that should hardly be a surprise.