Before 4 years ago, the war between Flash and HTML5 was declared by Steve Jobs and declared HTML5 as a winner. If you are thinking about the HTML5 standard, you could be excused-the prĂ©cis to 1997’s HTML4- given those browser vendors, coders and the press have been discussing about it for many years now.
But, HTML5 was still in change until at the moment. The recommendation of HTML5 is published by the W3C today, which is the final version of the standard after years of integrating features and making changes to it.
Users won’t notice any changes. Moreover, there are chances that your browser already supports most of the HTML5 features like vector graphics, the <video> element. Some of the other fabulous HTML5 features available are APIs for everything from offline caching to drag-and-drop support, the <canvas> element for rendering 2D shapes and bitmap images, and support for MathML for displaying mathematical notations in the browser.
Tim Berners-Lee, the W3C director said, in the statement, “Today we think nothing of watching video and audio natively in the browser, and nothing of running a browser on a phone”. He also added, “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.”
Paul Cotton, who is working as a W3C HTML co-chair and Partner Group Manager at Microsoft Open Technologies, said that he believes that the main achievements of HTML5 are that it “defines the set of interoperable HTML5 features that web developers can depend on in building their web sites.” The group discussed was moved to HTML 5.1 that featured in any non-interoperable. HTML 5.1 comes with a controversial idea that adds support for some kinds of digital rights management right into the standard.
It is expected that HTML 5.1 may be released as early as coming year and Working Group will work on such features that are excluded from HTML5. Cotton also believes that “the single most important feature of HTML5 is probably the <video> tag since today’s web is rapidly moving to being more about video.”
It is expected that it would take as long as 2020 to standardized process to get to a final recommendation. Users have a final version because of the W3C’s “Plan 2014”. Cotton believes that this was the biggest compromise the different stakeholders decided to. Cotton also told that “As part of ‘plan 2014′ we also encouraged the Working Group to permit work on some controversial items to proceed on their own path in parallel to HTML5 as ‘extension specs'” “In fact some of these extension specs were separately developed (i.e. Ruby and elements) and were folded back into HTML5 before its completion, and others like ‘long description’ are on their way to completion as separate W3C Recommendations.”
The challenge for organizations like HTML Working Group and W3C will be to keep up with the developing environment of doing open standards and to react to these changes, noted by Cotton. Cotton says, “For example, the tools that developers use to do their day jobs today i.e. GitHub, social media, etc. are much different than five years ago, and if we want future work of the HTML Working Group to engage web developers then we need to evolve as that environment changes”.
Likewise, the next version of the standard needs to focus on the many cores “application foundations” like such as media and real-time communications and services around the social web, tools for security and privacy, payments, annotations, device interactions, and application lifecycle. All such elements have made easier for developers to support the web platform. However, the W3C will instantly start fixing bugs with the final recommendation for HTML5 done. Importantly, it will work on HTML 5.1.
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