White paper on HTML5 programmer

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Wikipedia

HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML Living Standard. It is maintained by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), a consortium of the major browser vendors (Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft).

HTML5 was first released in a public-facing form on 22 January 2008, with a major update and “W3C Recommendation” status in October 2014. Its goals were to improve the language with support for the latest multimedia and other new features; to keep the language both easily readable by humans and consistently understood by computers and devices such as web browsers, parsers, etc., without XHTML’s rigidity; and to remain backward-compatible with older software. HTML5 is intended to subsume not only HTML 4 but also XHTML 1 and DOM Level 2 HTML.

HTML5 includes detailed processing models to encourage more interoperable implementations; it extends, improves, and rationalizes the markup available for documents and introduces markup and application programming interfaces (APIs) for complex web applications. For the same reasons, HTML5 is also a candidate for cross-platform mobile applications because it includes features designed with low-powered devices in mind.

Many new syntactic features are included. To natively include and handle multimedia and graphical content, the new <video>, <audio> and <canvas> elements were added, expandable sections are natively implemented through <summary>...</summary> and <details>...</details> rather than depending on CSS or JavaScript, and support for scalable vector graphics (SVG) content and MathML for mathematical formulas was also added. To enrich the semantic content of documents, new page structure elements such as <main>, <section>, <article>, <header>, <footer>, <aside>, <nav>, and <figure> are added. New attributes were introduced, some elements and attributes were removed, and others such as <a>, <cite>, and <menu> were changed, redefined, or standardized. The APIs and Document Object Model (DOM) are now fundamental parts of the HTML5 specification, and HTML5 also better defines the processing for any invalid documents.

The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) began work on the new standard in 2004. At that time, HTML 4.01 had not been updated since 2000, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was focusing future developments on XHTML 2.0. In 2009, the W3C allowed the XHTML 2.0 Working Group’s charter to expire and decided not to renew it.

The Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software presented a position paper at a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) workshop in June 2004, focusing on developing technologies that are backward-compatible with existing browsers, including an initial draft specification of Web Forms 2.0. The workshop concluded with a vote—8 for, 14 against—for continuing work on HTML. Immediately after the workshop, WHATWG was formed to start work based upon that position paper, and a second draft, Web Applications 1.0, was also announced. The two specifications were later merged to form HTML5. The HTML5 specification was adopted as the starting point of the work of the new HTML working group of the W3C in 2007.

WHATWG’s Ian Hickson (Google) and David Hyatt (Apple) produced W3C’s first public working draft of the specification on 22 January 2008.

While some features of HTML5 are often compared to Adobe Flash, the two technologies are very different. Both include features for playing audio and video within web pages, and for using Scalable Vector Graphics. However, HTML5 on its own cannot be used for animation or interactivity – it must be supplemented with CSS3 or JavaScript. There are many Flash capabilities that have no direct counterpart in HTML5 (see Comparison of HTML5 and Flash). HTML5’s interactive capabilities became a topic of mainstream media attention around April 2010 after Apple Inc.’s then-CEO Steve Jobs issued a public letter titled “Thoughts on Flash” in which he concluded that “Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content” and that “new open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win”. This sparked a debate in web development circles suggesting that, while HTML5 provides enhanced functionality, developers must consider the varying browser support of the different parts of the standard as well as other functionality differences between HTML5 and Flash. In early November 2011, Adobe announced that it would discontinue the development of Flash for mobile devices and reorient its efforts in developing tools using HTML5. On 25 July 2017, Adobe announced that both the distribution and support of Flash would cease by the end of 2020. Adobe itself officially discontinued Flash on 31 December 2020 and all Flash content was blocked from running in Flash Player as of 12 January 2021.

On 14 February 2011, the W3C extended the charter of its HTML Working Group with clear milestones for HTML5. In May 2011, the working group advanced HTML5 to “Last Call”, an invitation to communities inside and outside W3C to confirm the technical soundness of the specification. The W3C developed a comprehensive test suite to achieve broad interoperability for the full specification by 2014, which was the target date for recommendation. In January 2011, the WHATWG renamed its “HTML5” specification HTML Living Standard. The W3C nevertheless continued its project to release HTML5.

In July 2012, WHATWG and W3C decided on a degree of separation. W3C will continue the HTML5 specification work, focusing on a single definitive standard, which is considered a “snapshot” by WHATWG. The WHATWG organization continues its work with HTML5 as a “living standard”. The concept of a living standard is that it is never complete and is always being updated and improved. New features can be added but functionality will not be removed.

In December 2012, W3C designated HTML5 as a Candidate Recommendation. The criterion for advancement to W3C Recommendation is “two 100% complete and fully interoperable implementations”.

On 16 September 2014, W3C moved HTML5 to Proposed Recommendation. On 28 October 2014, HTML5 was released as a W3C Recommendation, bringing the specification process to completion. On 1 November 2016, HTML5.1 was released as a W3C Recommendation. On 14 December 2017, HTML5.2 was released as a W3C Recommendation.

The W3C ceded authority over the HTML and DOM standards to WHATWG on 28 May 2019, as it considered that having two standards is harmful. The HTML Living Standard is now authoritative. However, W3C will still participate in the development process of HTML.

Before the ceding of authority, W3C and WHATWG had been characterized as both working together on the development of HTML5, and yet also at cross purposes ever since the July 2012 split. The W3C “HTML5” standard was snapshot-based (HTML5, HTML5.1, etc.) and static, while the WHATWG “HTML living standard” is continually updated. The relationship had been described as “fragile”, even a “rift”, and characterized by “squabbling”.

In at least one case, namely the permissible content of the <cite> element, the two specifications directly contradicted each other (as of July 2018), with the W3C definition allowing a broader range of uses than the WHATWG definition.

The “Introduction” section in the WHATWG spec (edited by Ian “Hixie” Hickson) is critical of W3C, e.g. “Note: Although we have asked them to stop doing so, the W3C also republishes some parts of this specification as separate documents.” In its “History” subsection it portrays W3C as resistant to Hickson’s and WHATWG’s original HTML5 plans, then jumping on the bandwagon belatedly (though Hickson was in control of the W3C HTML5 spec, too). Regardless, it indicates a major philosophical divide between the organizations:

For a number of years, both groups then worked together. In 2011, however, the groups came to the conclusion that they had different goals: the W3C wanted to publish a “finished” version of “HTML5”, while the WHATWG wanted to continue working on a Living Standard for HTML, continuously maintaining the specification rather than freezing it in a state with known problems, and adding new features as needed to evolve the platform.

Since then, the WHATWG has been working on this specification (amongst others), and the W3C has been copying fixes made by the WHATWG into their fork of the document (which also has other changes).

The two entities signed an agreement to work together on a single version of HTML on 28 May 2019.

The W3C proposed a greater reliance on modularity as a key part of the plan to make faster progress, meaning identifying specific features, either proposed or already existing in the spec, and advancing them as separate specifications. Some technologies that were originally defined in HTML5 itself are now defined in separate specifications:

HTML Working Group – HTML Canvas 2D Context;
Web Apps Working Group – Web Messaging, Web workers, Web storage, WebSocket, Server-sent events, Web Components (this was not part of HTML5, though); the Web Applications Working Group was closed in October 2015 and its deliverables transferred to the Web Platform Working Group (WPWG).
IETF HyBi Working Group – Web Socket Protocol;
Web RTC Working Group – Web RTC;
Web Media Text Tracks Community Group – WebVTT.

Some features that were removed from the original HTML5 specification have been standardized separately as modules, such as Micro data and Canvas. Technical specifications introduced as HTML5 extensions such as Polyglot markup have also been standardized as modules. Some W3C specifications that were originally separate specifications have been adapted as HTML5 extensions or features, such as SVG. Some features that might have slowed down the standardization of HTML5 were or will be standardized as upcoming specifications, instead.