infoTECH Feature

October 29, 2014

HTML5 Standard Finalized After Years of Squabbling

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C (News - Alert)) published its Recommendation of HTML5 on Tuesday, the fifth major revision of the format and cornerstone of the Open Web Platform. This is the first revision in a very long time, since the publishing of HTML4 specifications in 1997. With HTML5 developers can employ the latest improvements to the format and build cross-platform, feature-rich applications.

The list of features that HTML5 brings to the table after these years of revision is seemingly endless, although many of them have been included in browsers for quite some time now. Web applications can play back video and audio content with simple <video> and <audio> elements instead of necessitating plugins like Flash, one of the main selling points of the new standard. In addition HTML5 adds functionality for displaying vector graphics (SVG) and mathematical notations (MathML), supports the <canvas> element for rendering 2D shapes and bitmap images, enables accessibility of rich applications and adds APIs for many more functions such as offline caching and drag-and-drop.

“Today we think nothing of watching video and audio natively in the browser, and nothing of running a browser on a phone,” said Tim Berners-Lee, Director of W3C. “We expect to be able to share photos, shop, read the news, and look up information anywhere, on any device. Though they remain invisible to most users, HTML5 and the Open Web Platform are driving these growing user expectations.”

Browser interoperability is another key focus of the new standard and a new HTML5 test suite, consisting of over 100,000 tests and growing, is dedicated to strengthening that aspect.

Paul Cotton, the W3C HTML Working Group co-chair and Partner Group Manager at Microsoft (News - Alert) Open Technologies, told Techcrunch he believes the main achievements of HTML5 to be that it “defines the set of interoperable HTML5 features that web developers can depend on in building their web sites.” According to Cotton, any remaining non-interoperable features were moved to HTML 5.1 which may be released as early as next year. The Working Group will continue to develop and expand on those features that were excluded from HTML5 in the interest of rolling out a standard as soon as possible under the W3C’s “Plan 2014.”

With the recommendation for HTML5 finally completed and released, the W3C plans to turn its attention toward fixing bugs and, most importantly, working on the features that will constitutre HTML 5.1.




Edited by Maurice Nagle
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