I don’t want the future to change by a large amount. The present isn’t that bad. HTML is good enough. CSS is not bad. JavaScript is okay. Yes, I’d like to see improvements. Yes, I’d like to see innovation. But not at the expense of interoperability.Jeremy Keith

I’m of the same mind. What’s wrong with just fixing some of the shitty parts of HTML 4 and moving forward? I’m reasonably happy with what I have but would like some improvement. Not a revolutionary change as such.

To be honest I don’t entirely think the future is cut and dried about how important HTML 5 will be in 5, 10 or even 15 years Matt. Superfast bandwidth, changes in science and technology, mobile technologies etc… the working group are just one silo in a world of even smarter people. I’d like to see a second Internet infrastructure developed, for example, using modern protocols which could stamp out spam, kiddie porn and nigerian scamming etc… the free to air web would still exist but commercially we’re running all this on top of 30 year old stuff… eventually that will become 40, 50 and 60 year technologies. Obviously the Internet as we know it, and therefore the web, will evolve or die like any organism. Unfortunately there’s an osterich paradigm at play where nearly everyone expects this to be exactly the same in 10 – 15 years as today only with HTML 5. That, to me, makes no sense.

It makes more sense to just incrementally improve HTML 4 and even XHTML 1 so that things work as we progress. So Jeremy’s words struck a chord.

But mostly I have taken it on board that HTML 5 is not about me at all. Its about several well known individuals who want to be remembered as the mavericks who carved a new specification. Legends in their own bedroom. They have their own agenda and accessibility for one isn’t in there because to them its a crock of shit. Much better to placate Flickr case studies

Still, if I wind up in 2020 working with a fully functional HTML 5 that does everything they want it also BETTER do everything I want. That’s what they need to understand. Because there will be other options at that stage… OK rant ended lol… sorry…

The world is bigger than HTML 5.

I’m expecting a lot more online talk, mud-slinging and such, about HTML5 in 2008 before we ever see it amount to much more than ‘HTML4 with bells on it!’

Joe’s article is (in typical Joe style) a no-nonsense and concise statement of why he’s not impressed with HTML5…and why the current technologies, if used correctly, would be sufficient for most requirements. Good to see some people have their head screwed-on eh?