Anne van Kesteren

Victory: new HTML WG

In Reinventing HTML Tim Berners-Lee writes: It is necessary to evolve HTML incrementally. The attempt to get the world to switch to XML, including quotes around attribute values and slashes in empty tags and namespaces all at once didn’t work. He also writes that there will be a new HTML WG working on this.

The comments on this post indicate that I might be too optimistic. That’s true, I’m just having good hopes that the W3C will get it right this time.

Comments

  1. It’s great that the W3C finally sees that HTML needs to be incrementally improved. But am I just being paranoid in observing that the announcement doesn’t read as an endorsement of HTML5 but as an announcement to develop another spec that incrementally improves HTML?

    Posted by Henri Sivonen at

  2. Not too sure this is worth that much attention. Let's say they introduce HTML 4.1, and then HTML 4.2, and so on. How will they deal with compatibility? Will it lead to a situation of complete unpredictability of browser support for developers? Will "deprecation" become a thing of the past simply because of not knowing who can read what, which ends up leading to a convoluted spec full of rules no one adheres to or even knows what to do with?

    Posted by Rahul at

  3. Woo Hoo! Party time! :-)

    Henri, regarding Web Apps, I think you are being a little paranoid. Tim explicitly stated that “We have strong support [from] browser makers” and given that the major browser vendors are behind the WHATWG, I doubt they’d support throwing out that work and beginning again.

    Regarding Web Forms, XForms and the new Forms WG, I agree there are valid concerns. I’m not entirely sure what to make of the forms-lite proposal which seems to fit in with what Tim said and is getting attention from the XForms community, but my feeling is that it will be a mistake.

    Posted by Lachlan Hunt at

  4. I would urge you to wait until the WG is actually formed and the charter and membership are apparent before assuming it means victory for the forces of good.

    Posted by Maciej Stachowiak at

  5. I can guess what will happen now. Opera and Firefox and Safari will be the first to implement any new changes to HTML over a short period of time. Five years later, Microsoft will implement some, but not all, of the new HTML changes. So hardly anyone will be able to use them. Hope I'm wrong!

    Posted by Chris Hester at

  6. I don't know about you people, but I'd rather see an implementation of XHTML 2 + WHATWG Web Apps instead of another HTML spec.

    Why do we need more HTML? It makes no sense to me. If you look at it, we are in the so-called Web 2.0, where what matters is stuff like Ajax, Flash, Flex, and other blargh. On the other hand, an open standard of semantic web mixed with web applications would bring much more benefits, including support in all or most browsers.

    Of course, this is my opinion only, but I stick to it.

    Posted by Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves at

  7. Like Maciej, I would be cautious about declaring victory. (I am also cautious about who are the forces of good... :P )

    This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. It may be the end of the beginning

    Still, it's not all bad...

    Posted by Chaals at

  8. In Reinventing HTML Tim Berners-Lee writes:

    It is necessary to evolve HTML incrementally. The attempt to get the world to switch to XML, including quotes around attribute values and slashes in empty tags and namespaces all at once didn’t work. He also writes that there will be a new HTML WG working on this.

    This radical change just proves the lack of credibility of the W3C as a working standards body.

    In what way a new HTML with additional tags help to attempt to get the world to switch to XML, including quotes around attribute values and slashes in empty tags and namespaces all at once?

    Please explain how adding <mrow>, <none>, <nav>... to next HTML would do more easy the transition from <br> to <br/>.

    Regards

    Posted by Juan R. at

  9. Juan R: The radical change here, is the leaving of «the radical change plan» which we have had till now, for the benefit of a new «incremental evolvement plan». The baby was thrown out with the bathing wather, but was caught before landing. We will now nurture it :-)

    Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves: The assumed Emperor xHTML has no clothes. HTML is just as semantic as XHTML

    This will lead to a much better understanding of what «semantic web» mean - I think.

    Posted by Leif Halvard Silli at

  10. Leif Halvard Silli,

    Appart from not explaining how a new collection of html tags will help to change to required attribute quotes and the empty tags syntax, now i got a new query.

    Why just stopping the development of HTML at #4 and continuing to XHTML 1 is in your own words «the radical change plan», but the development of a new HTML 5 (and a XHTML counterpart) would be for the benefit of a new «incremental evolvement plan»?

    I could understand the development of a mixture of HTML and XHTML favouring the transition [*] but arguing that a new HTML is needed for it is just untrue.

    Adding more tags and attributes to both the HTML and to the XHTML side, one increases the separation between both languages and not incrementally unifies them.

    Or said in other way, if quotes and / in emtpy tags are the true reason for XHTML fiasco then HTML 5 will do more difficult -or radical- the transition because one is increasing the difference between both languages (e.g. more tags at each side with two incompatible syntaxes one for XHTML and another for HTML).

    I agree with Brett Merkey that «Reinventing HTML» is a collection of correct statements which sum to something incorrect.

    [*] For instance with XML empty tags syntax but HTML attributes syntax, but is the change to XHTML really so difficult?

    Posted by Juan R. at

  11. Juan R., try learning something about the DOM and perhaps about the web as well. The web relies on HTML so defining how it works and upgrading it a bit is a very good step in the right direction.

    Posted by Anne van Kesteren at