W3C Publishes Plan For HTML 5.0 In 2014 and 5.1 in 2016

[engine]

The HTML Working Group has made much progress on HTML5 and related specifications. The HTML Working Group Chairs and the Protocols and Formats WG Chair have been asked by the W3C Team to provide a credible plan to get HTML5 to Recommendation status by 2014. Challenges remain in achieving this goal. We sought to produce a plan that achieves this date and that has minimal risk of delays from unexpected events.

We'd like to now propose our draft plan to the HTML Working Group for consideration. Here are the key points of our plan:

•Revise the draft HTML WG charter to indicate an HTML 5.0 Recommendation in 2014Q4 and an HTML 5.1 Recommendation in 2016Q4.
W3C Publishes Plan To HTML 5.0 In 2014 and 5.1 in 2016 [dev.w3.org]

[SevenCubed]

I guess there are still some things that don't move at the speed of the internet :(

[moTi]

i imply the slowdown of html 5 introduction is deliberate and very welcomed namely by two companies: google and apple.

by 2014 there will be hardly a real need for html 5 anymore, as the main purpose - web design for mobile devices - will have completely vanished. it's too late, everyone who wants to provide an adequate mobile experience for his users will have already seen oneself forced to code a "native app" (euphemism!) to cater android and ios.

it's a shame for the internet. very matching in this context, mark zuckerberg's admission of failure concerning their longstanding html 5 experiments with the facebook web app. and everyone applauding, including the stock market, when he praised their new native app. be careful what you wish for. walled gardens on the rise.

[swa66]

The status of HTML5 at w3.org isn't all that relevant for us webmasters. It is like it or not *the* standard to aim for for anything new we make - regardless of it being a candidate a recommendation or whatnot.

Our worry should be about browsers following the HTML5 standard (regardless of the standards current phase in the life of a standard). The compatibility of browsers is pretty decent with up to date browsers, but there is "that" browser with all it's orphaned versions that are so resistant to upgrades holding us back.

We just need to stop promoting and creating more HTML 4.*, xhtml 1.* and move to HTML5 or polyglot (x)html5 respectively.

Whatever status the standard gets at w3c at whatever date is really nothing to worry about. When we can stop having to support IE7 (and a big one after that: IE8) is the big concern - and in case of IE8 that's still many years away ...

[JAB Creations]

(X)HTML5 needs to be modularized like CSS. I can't remember how many times I've clicked to view something in the (X)HTML5 spec and had a hundred megabyte webpage load. It's nice that they are no longer shooting for I think it was a 2021 release or something wild like that?

What is most important is that long standing bugs in the browsers be resolved along with specific standards being given special emphasis.

I only support IE8 officially in regards to CSS2 and only barely test IE7. With Microsoft's cards of politics on the table either the browser supports native feature without a problem or I lock it out intentionally, tell users to change their browser and don't support it unless someone wants to pay me dearly for the trouble. IE's market share last month was 11.8%, people need to figure out how to do statistics right and start using object detection.

- John

[graeme_p]

@moTi, Webkit has fairly good HTML5 support as far as I can see - the browser that lags behind is IE.

I do not see HTML5 as particularly for mobile devices in the long term either: that happens purely because of Apple's ban on Flash for iOS.

@JAB: where are you getting that number for IE market share from? Statcounter global stats has it as 32%. It is much higher in some markets.

[lucy24]

11.8? Of what? In the one place I track systematically, it's over 40%. (This is depressing. But not half so depressing as the fact that over 20% of that 40% is <= MSIE 7. These are workplaces, so it doesn't do an iota of good to tell people to use something else. They can't.)

Why are they setting a date for 5.1 already? Is that based on the predicted number of bugs in 5.0 that will require fixing?

[JAB Creations]

@graeme_p && @lucy24 11.8% of my site's human visitors used any version of IE. If you add bots that number jumps dramatically, I don't count bots. Most use IE8, a lot of people can't upgrade to IE9 and IE9's market share isn't impressive by any means. I generally only glance at anyone else's statistics mainly because how they are gathered is horribly inaccurate. If someone can't use a different browser then it will lead them to question why they're stuck having to use something inferior.

- John

[lucy24]

If someone can't use a different browser then it will lead them to question why they're stuck having to use something inferior.

How 'bout: Because they gotta eat, and this is what's available.

Not all 9-5 browsing is people goofing off. Some of it's directly related to the job. Of course if your site is targeted at voluntary visitors with plenty of disposable income, and it's so attractive* that people will happily change their preferred browser to be able to see it, that's a different story.


* By word of mouth, I guess, since by definition they haven't seen it on their own machine yet.

[anallawalla]

Not all 9-5 browsing is people goofing off.

Well said, lucy24. Many corporate environments provide locked-down environments (down to blocking USB ports), so you could still be using IE6, as people around me are using. This is for reasons that cannot be solved quickly, e.g. IE6 only works with some legacy enterprise app that will eventually get upgraded. (They finally deployed Firefox to most users, but it doesn't take away the need to use old browsers for the legacy apps.)

While tech-savvy people know ways to get around corporate walls, they risk breaching security policy, a sackable offence.

[anallawalla]

11.8? Of what? In the one place I track systematically, it's over 40%.

At a moderately busy site with a consumer base (million+ visits a day), the month to date breakdown is:
IE = 53.8%
FF = 14.4%
Ch = 13.2%
Sa = 10.7%
Op = 0.1%
Balance is bots.

[kemcar]

Many corporate houses do not allow all the browsers and hence most of the new ones are blocked from use. I think that is the reason IE6 is still in use much to the dislike of many. The way out is the modification of the old browsers so that they serve to be more efficient than now.

[lucy24]

Many corporate houses do not allow all the browsers

Some governments can't afford to upgrade. And not all workplaces will let you blithely install your own software on their computers. (That is: A computer that belongs to them, even if it's for your exclusive use.) Even if you know more about it than the technicians do ;)

:: detour to investigate ::

###, I may have found a robot in a context where robots should there none be. What do they teach in Canadian science classes anyway?

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 5.1; Trident/4.0; MathPlayer 2.20; Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1) ; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E)

Anyway, the systems running MSIE 6 and 7 are almost all NT 5.1. What's the newest MSIE they can support?

On this admittedly atypical site, humans run about:
42% MSIE
22% FF
17% each Chrome and Safari (including mobiles-- this was a rough & dirty test)
<1% Opera

But the MSIE usage is pretty meaningless unless you also look at the OS, which here is
74% Windows
23% Mac
1.6% Linux
...and the rest are miscellaneous non-Mac mobiles.

What was this thread about again?

[bhonda]

Can we put bets on as to whether those dates will be met?

[mattur]

The only people this announcement really affects are lawyers. The reason for getting a standard to REC at W3C is to bring the W3C Patent Policy into force:

[w3.org...]

As swa66 pointed out above - and has always been the case - what matters for developers, authors, site owners and users is widespread, interoperable UA support, not when some random lump of features is punted through an arbitrary set of goalposts at the W3C.