The evolution and future of HTML

I don’t know about others, but I haven’t been paying all that much attention to what’s going on with HTML 5 lately. Once I realised that it would not be about fixing the Web I pretty much lost interest.

Despite not being involved anymore I sometimes stumble across information related to HTML 5. One source of information, from a more humorous point of view, is Last Week in HTML5. Beware of sarcasm before entering.

Another, more serious, piece of info related to HTML 5 is HTML Evolution (see HTML5 Evolution for a related blog post). To provide background for a W3C meeting, Sam Ruby (co-chair of the HTML Working Group) has put together a whole lot of select quotes from different parts of the history of HTML, from the very beginning to the present day.

The background is that the current state of HTML 5 development is not what it should be, and that it should be possible to improve matters. Two of Sam’s ideas:

We should also endeavor to get the XHTML2 and HTML Working Groups brought together, or at least have the overlaps removed.

Interesting idea. Not sure if it’s good or bad, but it would certainly be interesting to combine the best parts of XHTML 2 and HTML 5.

Within the working group there certainly is more than adequate representation for the perspective of web crawlers and browser implementors. It is less obvious that we have adequate representation from content creators. Perhaps some sort of outreach by the W3C is appropriate here?

I believe having more content creators and “authors”, i.e. web designers and web developers, in the HTML Working Group would be good. Unfortunately I think it’s hard to find web professionals who can spare the time unless they get paid to participate. I know I can’t.

Posted on March 17, 2009 in HTML 5, Web Standards, (X)HTML