Last week we looked at how some browsers and plug-ins were adopting storage-related API’s that are a part of the new HTML5 draft specification. While Gears, Opera and Webkit have implemented structured storage API’s, the remainder of the HTML5 spec currently remains mostly unimplemented and also in a state of flux. HTML5 is a super-sized effort to bring all the browsers under a single, standard markup language and set of API’s - but with Microsoft, Adobe and others racing ahead with their own next-gen web technologies, will we ever see a real HTML5 standard?
Learning From History
In terms of the scope and effort, the HTML5 effort has an earlier historical analogy in the HTML 3.0 spec. Back in April of 1995, the HTML 3.0 spec was drafted as a backwards-compatible way of adding new features (such as tables) to HTML 2.0. The W3C had only just formed, and HTML 3.0 was one of the first specs to be produced by the new working group. At the time the browser wars were just around the corner, as Navigator had been out for only five months and had already built up 80% market share. Microsoft had taken notice and were rushing out Internet Explorer 1.0 which would be released a few short months later.
As it remains today, in 1995 the different browsers all supported a different set of markup. With their new 1.1 release, Netscape had raced ahead and implemented tables, floating images, and other navigational elements (such as visited links). IE 1 was a complete hack of a browser that had an approach of rendering at all cost, meaning that if it couldn’t work out what the user had intended with the HTML, it would do its best to have a guess and present anything. This resulted in issues such as being able to mix tags (eg. <b><p>Header</b></p>) which allowed developers to be lazier as IE would compensate for mistakes.
With the market share of Internet Explorer steadily rising, and with frequent point releases and updates from both Netscape and Microsoft, the two browsers steadily diverged further as the market was also segmented into two firm camps. The HTML specification effort, which had previously taken the form of RFC’s, was supposed to re-unite the browsers and formalize new features that browsers had already introduced. There was often significant tension amongst contributors to the spec about which browser, Netscape or Explorer, had a better implementation of each new feature. For example, Netscape and Explorer had very different approaches to image maps, where they were not compatible with one another. Microsoft were also responsible for making up random HTML tags, such as <top> and <bottom> to define static areas of a page (which would later become the very unfriendly frameset tags thanks to Netscape).
The problem was not that these new features were already out in the wild, but that there were two fiercely competitive products each implementing their own version of the web in order to either protect their market share or to gain control of more of it. Eventually both Netscape and Microsoft gave up on implementing a proper HTML 3.0 spec, for example from Netscape:
Netscape remains committed to supporting HTML 3.0. To that end, we’ve gone ahead and implemented several of the more stable proposals, in expectation that they will be approved. We believe that Netscape Navigator 2.0 supports more of the HTML 3.0 specifications than any other commercial client.
In addition, we’ve also added several new areas of HTML functionality to Netscape Navigator that are not currently in the HTML 3.0 specification. We think they belong there, and as part of the standards process, we are proposing them for inclusion
and Microsoft were left playing catchup in terms of supporting HTML:
Netscape has enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the browser market (about 90% according to some estimates), and this has allowed it to consolidate its position still further by introducing unofficial or ‘extended’ HTML tags. As a result, the Web is littered with pages that only work effectively if viewed in Navigator. By the time other browsers catch up, Netscape has made even more additions.
but that didn’t last long and Microsoft tired of playing that game. Further releases didn’t even mention HTML anymore and instead talked about a web built on Microsoft technology:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 is the first Internet client to integrate ActiveXTM technologies, which enable developers to create highly interactive applications and content for the Internet. These technologies allow a World Wide Web site to be as rich and interactive as an action game, a multimedia encyclopedia or a productivity application. For the first time, a Web site will be limited only by its author’s imagination, not by the limitations of the technology.
In a very quick year the browser wars had progressed from fighting over HTML tag support and towards the formats and languages that would produce richer client-side applications. The battle between Javascript (the Netscape proprietary client-side scripting language) and ActiveX (the Microsoft proprietary object container) was just around the corner with the release of Internet Explorer 3.0 in August of 1996.
The rest of the story where Microsoft wins, and more importantly, how they won, the browser war is common history. The web had fractured in a big way, with repercussions that would last for over a decade as thousands of developer hours go to waste producing cross-browser hacks and libraries. Despite Microsoft gaining dominance in the browser market and promoting multiple tiers of proprietary technology for building web applications, somehow simple HTML, Javascript and CSS eventually won over and Web 2.0 wasn’t built on ActiveX.
Fast Forward Ten Years
While Netscape has disappeared and been replaced with Firefox, the battle for the web today is not only between browsers but also one between new web platforms and technologies. The market share of Internet Explorer has by some estimates been notched down to 78% (from a high in 2004 of 95%), with Firefox at 16% and Safari, Opera and others making up the remaining 6%. HTML 4.01 was published in December of 1999 and went on to become an ISO standard as the major browsers built in support for the spec. HTML 4.01 still remains the most widely and best supported HTML standard, but the problems today have migrated to other parts of the web technology stack, specifically with CSS and DOM access.
In what is now referred to as Web 2.0, thousands of rich web applications have been developed using HTML, CSS and XML - more commonly referred to as Ajax (ironically the a and x parts of Ajax started as a proprietary add-on to Internet Explorer in the form of xmlhttprequest). Ajax applications quickly reached limitations of what can be done with current technologies, but they had shortened the gap between desktop and web applications. A number of vendor-backed web client platforms such as Flash from Adobe and Silverlight from Microsoft have been released as a layer above the browser, presenting developers with a very rich desktop-like development environment for web applications. These new platforms work by extending existing browsers through plugins, and while these commercial solutions have already launched there is currently no suitable open source and open standards based alternative that extends beyond Ajax.
Frustrated by the lack of progress with HTML5 at the W3, a group of browser developers split off and formed WHATWG to further develop the specification. The primary mission of HTML5 was to recognize that the web has changed since the original HTML specs, as web applications were now capable of presenting very complex user interfaces and could make use of more advanced system functions (for the interface, Silverlight uses XAML while Flex/Flash uses MXML). The spec began as Web Applications 1.0, which was an umbrella term to describe not only the new HTML5 spec but other associated specifications such as CSS2, DOM5, ECMAv4 and new API calls (such as local browser storage).
The WHATWG working group spec was eventually (after 4 years) folded back into W3, and Microsoft joined the effort again. In the interim, developers searching for a rich web app platform beyond Ajax had little option other than to join either the Microsoft or Adobe universe. Progress on implementing the HTML5 spec was still very slow, until Google recognised the threat of a Microsoft or Adobe dominated web and stepped in by creating Gears. Gears is Google’s way of hurrying up implementation of HTML5 features in browsers, and they have backed it at each step by having their own applications such as Gmail and Reader support the new API calls.
Apple is another company who are fully backing the open, HTML5 alternative for rich internet applications. It was only a few years ago that a visitor to the Apple homepage would find a page dominated by Flash and PDF files. Today Apple have their own open-standards based browser with Safari and back the Webkit open source project. They have also backed up their support for both the free and open alternative by re-engineering their websites and applications to use Ajax over proprietary alternatives such as Flash.
We are back in 1996 again and HTML5 is the new HTML 3.0, but instead of two major browser manufacturers today there are numerous parties with interest in determining what the new web API and virtual machine will look like. In the 1990’s version of events, the open standards eventually won over - which both Microsoft and Adobe have recognized as they have released source code and API details for some parts of their platforms.
Web history teaches us that there is usually a single winner, as all users steadily migrate to the single winning solution which imposes itself as a standard (recall that many of today’s ’standards’ began life as proprietary technologies). There is a big difference though between a standard such as the Windows operating system, and an open standard such as HTML5 - and a repeat dose of the former is the biggest threat that companies such as Google and Apple currently face.
You can read the previous Next-Gen Web post about local browser storage here.
See all
Post
when does html 5 get release
Speaking as a developer of web applications, I honestly care much less about HTML5 than I do about cross-browser support for CSS3 (or at least universal support for CSS2 and translucent PNGs). Developers are literally wasting thousands of hours a year working out inconsistencies in the CSS rendering employed by Internet Explorer vs. the standards-compliant browsers. Worse still, this work is the single biggest morale-killer I know of to web developers across the board; they hate having to do it and burnout is a serious concern for anyone who has to do it for any kind of long stretch. IE8 seems to be a step in the right direction, but if the adoption rate is anything like IE7 developers will still be forced to work with broken software for at least the next 3-5 years.
HTML5 is great in theory, and bringing an open standard to web applications to support a richer interface is an admirable goal. However, cross-browser JS libraries are abundant and let us “make do” with the browsers we have now in the user interaction and dynamic content arenas. In my opinion it would be far more useful to the developers for the vendors to unilaterally step forward with CSS Level 3 support including a forced upgrade path if at all possible.
I think HTML (incl 5) is still far behind the need and the technical ability of the interactive and multimedia industry. And most other technologies require programming skills and and special environment.
We took a different approach by creating a simple XML-based markup language that will enable, in addition to common text+image handling, graphics, seamless multimedia integration, interactivity (opening animation, drag-n-drop, events), various data sources (incl RSS feeds), plugins and many more.
It uses Flash for display which ensures same results on all browsers and platforms as well as stand-alone and (soon on) mobiles.
Is it just me, or does the Silverlight logo look like a pair of panties?
There will most likely never be that standard we are so desperately searching for… as with everything, things keep evolving!
Apple IS
not Apple ARE
@4 - dude you obviously need to get laid.
tl;dr
@Michael - Hahaha, granny panties!
Where did you get the data for Firefox 40% market share? The last data I saw was closer to 15%….
Trace: I changed those stats because I didn’t trust the source. I am referencing 15% now from thecounter.com. I found estimates that varied from Firefox having 6% through to it having 40% - I think the reference I use now is probably the fairest and most accurate.
Microsoft is “racing ahead” with their own next-gen web technologies??
Please…It’s more like sputtering to keep up with the other more modern browsers.
“Web history teaches us that there is usually a single winner, as all users steadily migrate to the single winning solution which imposes itself as a standard”
Is this true? This implies that IE became the dominant browser because users preferred IE over Netscape. (Which I don’t think is the case…I’m guessing most users didn’t give a crap at all. When computers came installed with IE—usually with an icon that said “Teh Internet!”—and not Netscape, so that’s what users clicked.)
Besides, if let’s say safari, firefox, and IE all did end up settling on a standard and they all conformed significantly well, I’m guessing they’d all be wieners.
Standards are nice, but implementation is what browser makers are aiming towards right now. All next-gen browsers are aiming to pass the Acid3 test (http://acid3.acidtests.org/) which runs the browser through a series of real world needs (css compatability, javascript animations, SVG, Canvas etc.).
Hopefully when they all pass, we’ll have a new implementation based standard.
The W3C needs to get back to doing their job and realise that the world doesn’t need hundreds of useless specs. They need to focus on HTML4.01 and XHTML1.1, CSS2.1 and DOM *exclusively*. XHTML1.1/HTML4.01 do *not* need updating, they need support. The W3C should be working with and promoting their existing good specs (listed) and not inventing new specs (XForms, widgets) or creating new versions of perfectly good standards (HTML5).
Yes, you fell into the search for “browser stats” on Google mistake. Some of the guys at our design studio quoted the W3Schools stats without realising it’s just for their own site’s usage ie. web developers, who are more likely to use Firefox.
I’m less confident there will be a single winner. There could well be 3:
[1] XAML/WPF in Silverlight and Vista is here to stay as a UI framework. Especially as WPF looks like it could handle funky interfaces such as Surface in the future.
[2] But the support for Flash by design/ad/media companies is pretty huge. Though adoption of AIR is happening slower than I at first thought could happen.
[3] Java on BluRay, Android and other mobile/gadgets might bring another strong UI player
I think the problem with moving these standards forward is (and always has been) that the committees that work on those standards suffer from an over representation of mayor players (browser manufacturers and big co software companies) and an under representation of independent web developers and users.
As long as that’s the case the cat fight will continue, individual players will race ahead in their quest to gain market share and the real innovation progresses at snail speed. I am afraid, unless someone forces a change of governing structure at the W3C we’ll continue to see the same story unfold over and over.
See you in 10 years when it’s time to lamet about the lack of progress with HTML 5.5
@ #4 Pat Hawks -
British and Australian english treat groups as plural entities (companies, governments, etc) and thus refer to it as “Apple are.” American English treats them singularly, thus, “Apple is.”
Just FYI.
Anyway, great article. I love these long features at Techcrunch like this and the GPS location article.
Developers don’t need any HTML-5 untill CSS is works equally in all browsers.
Microsoft and Google (Firefox) are responsible for the billion dollar loses that the developer community bares trying to optimize for both browsers.
When Firefox started IE had over 90% of the market.
Parsing webpages differently to IE is showing disrespect to developers.
Browser companies can “propose” any features, but only after the basic ones work which is now not the case. You now need 2 div’s to make a div of the same size in both browsers.
Well said!! You all have high opinions on what is to come with the Internet. Great job.
I wrote a similar rant (but I’m no expert) on my blog a few months ago when the first draft was released [http://nickc321.blogspot.com/2008/03/browser-support-for-html-5.html] The migration from html3 - 4 was starting when I first joined the party (heck I left the webdev party cause of it all). I didn’t go back and do all the history like tech crunch has done (great job by the way)
Anyways, regardless whether or not all browsers shake hands and support the next standards and/or all the side market platforms are integrated or not, how long will it be before we create the next frontier, and again the market will split and we will be waiting till html6 and then 7 and so on and so forth. For those of us who are developers, we exist to create the ‘next’ we are always pushing the current standards towards new ones. I guess this kind of thing is something we are just going to have to get use to…
Interesting comments so far. I really think that they should strip the HTML5 effort back and do a point release with the most important features, ie. the stuff that people are already starting to implement like local storage, worker threads etc.
I should have mentioned this in the post, but specs seem to work better when they reflect what is actually being built - rather than blue-sky designing on a mailing list between a small group of people.
So besides CSS and DOM, it would be great to see the browser guys as well as Google, Yahoo etc. sit down and work out:
* local storage
* file uploads / multi-file upload / getting files *onto* the web in general
* local image manipulation
* x-domain xmlhttprequest
* standard/better way of declaring document types and conditional stuff for diff browser versions (eg. a standard way to sniff browser/version)
and instead of waiting for the whole world to run either IE8 or FF3, I am sure Microsoft could push out a hotfix or two to get CSS/DOM compatability working better in IE6/7. Most PC’s from XP up have windows update, its just a lot of people aren’t bothering to upgrade the actual browser because they either dont see the benefit or they are in a corp environment.
@Andy: yes! thats exactly what I did, I had a feeling it wasn’t right but couldn’t work out why so I pulled other sources as well
@18 You obviously are a new comer to web development, read over the history that Nik put together, it was Microsoft the one that disrespected the web developer community by strong-arming it with a pre-installed, buggy, non-standards compliant browser. Besides after they had killed the original Netscape they sat on their Laurels and didn’t fix or improved IE for the longest time. It took Firefox to put fire!! on their butts and get them working again on IE. Healthy competition can be good for the industry. The problem is companies like M$FT tend to not play fair.
Firefox — didn’t they have 90% market share? Or at least 51% instead of 15%.
LOL for the firefox daydreamers…
@ absoluttely agree
Instead of rolling out some crap like Silverlight (that nobody needs) it’s better to concentrate on making the technologies that are currently in use work.
@23 Microsoft never respected anybody’s work
Firefox did a nice job, but parsing the code differently from IE wasn’t the part of it.
rmunix/@18: Thats right - I was meaning to, but had forgotten, to mention that between 99 and 04/05 or so Microsoft basically did zero browser work. They could have used that time to get a lot of development work done, but instead once Netscape went down they took almost everybody out of the browser group and threw both the people and the money into other departments.
Microsoft did absolutely great with IE. Firefox is junk. Whoever calling Microsoft not respecting standards should first know God of the Internet’s robustness principle re “be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you receive”, well observed for a long time in the field of computing science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Postel
silicon valley dropout: “when does html 5 get release”.
W3C had scheduled the HTML 5 spec to be finalize by late 2010 (http://www.w3.org/2007/03/HTML-WG-charter.html#deliverables). However, so far W3C is 6 months off their first milestone and likely to be even farther off of their next one and many expect HTML5 spec to take a lot, lot longer. The WHATWG Wiki, expects HTML5 spec to reach Candidate Recommendation by 2012 then only to be finalized by 2022 or later!!! (http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#When_will_HTML_5_be_finished.3F) That’s not a typo, check out the link for an explanation on why they expect it to take until 2022 to finalize, reaching that conclusion with how long HTML4 took compared to how much larger HTML5 is in comparison.
Also HTML5 spec is just one piece of the puzzle. As Michael Bleigh commented above the other piece is CSS and the final piece being getting the ECMAScript 4 standard finalized for JavaScript 2. Apparently, there’s currently a push for ECMAScript 4 to be wrapped up by the end of this year.
Speaking of which, all this talk about open standards, the article does not mentioned that ActionScript the programming language for Flash is an implementation of the ECMAScript standard and has been since ActionScript 1.0. The JavaScript 2 engine for a future version of Firefox is going to be quite fast with a just-in-time compiler, thanks to Adobe donating the code base of the ActionScript Virtual Machine 2 that runs inside of the Flash Player.
Unfortunately, even if all the major browsers reach a point where there’s good support for HTML5, CSS2 and JavaScript 2, you are still looking at 5+ years before you can begin to ignore old browsers (based on historical data of how long it takes for users to upgrade their browser). If you look at websites that track not just browser but version number, you will see that IE6 still has HUGE user base and for some sites is still the #1 browser. Even Firefox 1.5 still has quite a bit of support from users, which I found surprising as I figured Firefox users would be more likely to upgrade quickly.
As far as browser wars go, while Adobe obviously pushes Flash, it’s been interesting to see how Adobe has begun supporting the WebKit project (http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/webkit/Webkit). First Adobe included WebKit in Adobe AIR and recently they included WebKit as part of the Dreamweaver CS4 beta. Adobe is now a contributor to the WebKit project and I imagine it will be included in other Adobe products where needed.
or, at least take a look at http://www.joelonsoftware.com/.....03/17.html
As far as I can tell, there’s something else that changed since 95 which was not mentioned in this post. I’m talking about Google’s dominance and what it entails. Today, a new form of developer has emerged - the SEO specialist.
As an SEO specialist myself, I understand that building pretty websites with state-of-the-art functionality is not enough. I must abide by W3 guidlines simply because Google seems to favor sites that do so. In this respect, the true trends setter, in my opinion, is google - at least for as long as they maintain their dominance. It is for this reason, that I agree that full browser support for CSS3 is required. If search engines are to correctly interpret the content of a given website, they must use some sort of standard. Google, being the dominant search engine around has adopted W3 and as a result, more and more developers choose to do so as well. I, for example, stay away from flash only website because google has a difficult time indexing them. I therefore always suggest that people not rely solely on flash technology.
It is obviously true that it would be great if HTML5 were commonly adopted. However, as long as it isn’t, I think the best bet is to use whatever technology google supports taking into account that google holds about 80% of the search engine market share.
Stop writing “Microsoft were…”!! It’s “Microsoft was…”! Who writes like you?? No one else on TC does, why do you do it?!?
>rmunix/@18: Thats right - I was meaning to, but had forgotten, to mention that between 99 and 04/05 or so Microsoft basically did zero browser work.
The first time in history since reading TechCrunch that I have almost to conclude TechCrunch articles have degraded to the point that I’m about to give up reading TC.
@32
+1
blake: its a US/UK English thing, I will eventually fully Americanize
@YDRIVE: its simple really:
IE 6.0: Launched August 2001
IE 7.0: Launched October 2006
thats over 5 years. Care to guess what the market share graph looks like when you plug IE releases against it?
IE 6.0 left developers with very very poor CSS support for 5 years, and as somebody mentioned above, its still out there in high numbers now (a 7 year old browser)
@Nik Cubrilovic
People waste more time making their code “compatible with Firefox” than “work with IE6.0″
If IE6.0 a Aug 2001 release — what’s that “between 99 and (whatever..)”
If IE7.0 a Oct 2006 release — it took no time to develop a browser (in, what, 04? 05?)
And IE6.0, while there’re certainly issues, it’s so far the most stable one, and most widespread one, it’s like Win XP.. People don’t like Vista, not because Vista not good, but XP already not bad.
“and most widespread one, it’s like Win XP..”
you almost got something right. Ie6 is not ‘like’ XP, it is XP.. and they couldn’t have picked a worse version to bundle on a dominant OS than IE6
Point still applies though, for over 5 years MSFT took almost all effort off of developing IE. They only got back into gear when Firefox started gaining traction. IE7 was a *very direct* response to Firefox (popup blocking, tabs, phishing filter, you name it..)
IF you took a survey of 100 web developers and asked them if the problems are with IE, or are they with Firefox, I think 99 of them will tell you its IE (assuming you take the survey as well, otherwise it would be 100).
I honestly don’t think I have ever heard anybody make that assertion about IE6, even most of the IE team now blog or talk about how they are patching things up after IE6.
using HTML, CSS and XML - more commonly referred to as Ajax
what?
Funny Google is not into HTML5 until they realize M$ is posing a threat to their business w/ SilverLight. In other words, Google’s participation is agenda-driven instead of for the best interest of customers. I therefore wonder if HTML5 starts out from the wrong base.
I as a customer have used a few web apps done in Adobe Flash and M$ SilverLight, and I’d say they are much better than typical web apps coming out of Google’s camp. Adobe’s buzzword alone blows lame Google Docs away. Soon M$ and Sun will jump in w/ their SilverLight and JavaFX stuff. The web apps become much more enjoyable to use once they are set free from the so-called standards such as HTML/JAVASCRIPT/CSS package.
So now Google is trying to hijack the HTML standard and steer the market toward their direction, huh? Good luck w/ that. The resulted HTML5 better be as good as Flash / SilverLight or there’s no market, ’cause customers are not going to be fooled forever by their “do no evil” weasel words.
IE6/IE7 is certainly not the best, in as much as RSS nowadays is certainly not the best (compared to Atom), but the mere fact that it survives throughout all these years, is largely due to msft’s thoughtful work, “between 99 and 04/05 or so, done for it (vs. your claim of “Microsoft did basically zero browser work” during that period), that being the point of sentiment here.
The other points are just in the eyes of the beholders (and msft bashers).
Man, I love me some Internet!
I can’t wait until it gets upgraded to HTML5!
What do you guys think this will bring?
I hope it is some good stuff! Maybe integrated Twitter!
guys, what do you think about this “comet” style pub/sub messaging ?
@22,
I’m beginning to wonder how much research was actually done for this article. I work with Ian Hickson, the HTML5 spec editor, and he’s answered comments like the ones in this post numerous times on the w3c lists in the past. Did you contact him or read the w3c archives? If so, it seems like some of your questions and comments would have been answered by an authoritative source.
Here’s a few responses off the top of my head:
“I really think that they should strip the HTML5 effort back and do a point release with the most important features, ie. the stuff that people are already starting to implement like local storage, worker threads etc.”
HTML5 is being developed in the open partially so that implementation and spec design can inform each other. The “release” of a spec comes after there is general agreement that it is correct and there are multiple implementations (or at least that is current w3c process, if I’m not mistaken). I don’t understand what “releasing” before then means, or would buy you. You even recognize that implementors are already starting to tackle bits of the spec.
I think you also underestimate the influence the spec has already had. Both WebKit (Safari) and Gecko (Firefox) have implemented numerous bugfixes as well as parsing/layout changes to comply with the HTML5 spec, and members of both development communities already work closely to make sure the spec and the browsers come into sync with each other whenever new behaviors are uncovered.
“specs seem to work better when they reflect what is actually being built - rather than blue-sky designing on a mailing list between a small group of people.”
The HTML5 mailing lists (w3c and whatwg) have subscriber numbers of around 1000 people if I recall, including representatives from Apple, Mozilla, Opera, Microsoft, Google, Nokia, Adobe, etc. Furthermore, Ian has explicitly stated his desire to include any and all implementors in the discussion, and noted that “at the end of the day, if we spec something browser manufacturers refuse to implement, we’re irrelevant” when explaining why the opinions of browser manufacturers are so critical. So I sort of wonder why your statement seems to assume that in fact this discussion is not already happening.
“* local storage
* file uploads / multi-file upload / getting files *onto* the web in general
* local image manipulation
* x-domain xmlhttprequest
* standard/better way of declaring document types and conditional stuff for diff browser versions (eg. a standard way to sniff browser/version)”
All of these have been discussed on the lists, and most have works in progress or formal proposals coming from various groups (e.g. the Gears folks’ work on image manipulation).
“I am sure Microsoft could push out a hotfix or two to get CSS/DOM compatability working better in IE6/7.”
This statement seems incredibly naive. The behavior of CSS and DOM rendering in IE6 and 7 is frozen; Microsoft can’t make such a breaking change as a “hotfix”. It would quite literally break the web for IE users.
All browser manufacturers understand this. It’s the same reason why Firefox 1.0.x, 1.5.0.x, and 2.0.0.x do not include CSS/DOM parsing/rendering changes. Such changes are major changes and result in new major versions.
@YDRIVE
IE6 is only great if you are Microsoft or an MS fanboy, if you are a web developer it is junk… actually it is just junk. Firefox was the light at a long dark tunnel of sites design to work in IE instead of all browsers, and forced MS into actually working on a half decent standards based browser - IE8.
People don’t spend time “making their code “compatible with Firefox””, they simply design sites based on standards supported by millions of web developers and almost all modern browsers. It’s IE6 that they waste time getting sites to work on.
There is too much happening in the html spec. Local storage is not an issue that should be dealt with in that spec. I think the new tagging is plain stupid. It will happen as fast as xhtml2 whatever that is. With Gears etc. who needs a local storage spec. The damn thing is open source duh!
Like some of the previous commenters said - what needs to be focused on first is universal cross browser suport of all of CSS2 and CSS3. Then we can worry about the HTML. The HTML isn’t what’s broken - it’s the support for the CSS we are supposed to be used to style it with.
I say it from the heart: Microsoft sucks!
when does html 5 get release
@Peter Kasting
First of all, everything you talk about is from my comments here, not the post, and is my opinion - so it doesn’t have much to do with ‘research’. I am on the mailing lists and have been for years, I have seen *numerous* occassions where effort is spent to spec out some feature or function, and then when somebody comes along to actually implement it, it comes back again with all these changes. Its impossible to account for all potential user, developer and environment variations, I am not sure what I said is even a complaint about anything or anyone, its just a fact.
You might think that a spec being certified is important, but almost everybody follows and knows about the draft process, they dont suddenly find out about this great new html5 spec only when it becomes a recommendation.
Also, please explain to me how fixing CSS bugs in a major browser release is different to fixing CSS bugs in a minor browser release. I have seen numerous hotfixes from Microsoft that fix smaller issues in point releases. Or is it part of the spec that changes can only be made in major browser releases? Fact is also that Microsoft could do a lot more to force an upgrade path for IE users
All that it comes down to is that WHATWG can’t take criticism, even when it is of the softest kind. You can pick-and-choose as many statements from the comment thread here as you like, but in doing so you are ignoring 99% of other things that developers and bloggers are saying (such as the timeline for implementation) and why html5 is being picked up so slowly. You may have noticed that there are a ton of developers out there who are simply just confused by html5 and whatever it is that is going on.
I also know that there are formal ‘proposals’ for most of those technologies that I pointed out, but the point is that we have had ‘proposals’ for as long as the web has been around, yet everything is still a mess because of implementations. I was referring to getting the implementations done right (and 50% of commenters here have referred to the same thing). The work on this spec will probably continue for another 5 years, but there are some pretty big issues that need some attention today.
I hope you coming here and telling me my opinion isn’t correct is not a reflection of how the rest of the WHATWG works with the actual specs as well. I also hope that the WHATWG definition of reesarch doesn’t mean “whatever WHATWG thinks is correct, please ask us to find out what that may be”
There are plenty of cross-browser javascript libraries (the DOJO’s etc) to help building RIAs. The winner will most likely be the one who makes it as easy as 4GL development did to draw/paint the GUI, rather than spending hours and hours to get (re-)design/develop the interface. If not Flex or Silverlight, maybe open source solutions like WaveMaker will draw those people currently struggling.