HTML5 is HTML and HTML5 means Open Web Platform / Web Standards
Friday, January 21st, 2011
Update 22 January, 2011: Ian Jacobs has clarified on the W3C blog that the statement about HTML5 meaning HTML, CSS, SVG etc has been removed and that it now simply refers to… shock, horror… HTML5. However, still find it daytura-esque to run HTML as a generic specification with a live document.[end update]
Call me old fashioned but I like to call a spade a spade… not a spade a shovel and a spade a shovel, garden fork, car hoist, jimmy bar and antique musket. To the average person on Earth this sounds like rubbish… as it should.
HTML 5 is now HTML and HTML5 now means HTML, CSS, SVG, JavaScript, WOFF, XML and anything that fits into the area I always understood to be called Web Standards… or what I’d agree to be called the Open Web Platform.
To make that smorgasborg of self-reference even more interesting… like someone spent a little too long on the loo after suspect vindaloo… the W3C is going to be releasing a snapshot of HTML5… which is and isn’t HTML… because HTML will be a live unversioned document that changes over time. Leaving the question… what is the real world use of the snapshot if it’s not the HTML specification?
I do know HTML5 (HTML) is a specification document meant for browser developers and not people like me… but how logistically viable would it be for anybody to read the live HTML specification with reliance on it’s validity even 2 or 3 days later? How do you have conversations about its content? A specification without versioning CANNOT BE RELIED UPON TO BE TRUE AT ANY POINT IN TIME. Because it can change. It probably has changed since you last read any part of it – the wording and / or intent of already complex ideas.
But hey… I’m not a specifications expert. I know my limitations (vomit in a bag would smell better than trolling through W3C specifications in my world). I’m just a little worried about having a versionless live document as a W3C specification because versioning is a fundamental principle of software engineering. Would you like PHP to take that route, or C++ or Ruby or practically anything else you can think of in software? A versionless Photoshop? A versionless operating system?
Not to mention the overall ambiguity of trying to jump on the marketing buzzword of HTML5 as though it can be captured for all time. Buzzwords fade… Ajax became a dirty word in conversations simply because buzzwords don’t mean the same thing in everybody’s mind and can’t be captured in neat little jars like butterflies. At least Web Standards meant something… and if that lost efficiency due to it becoming a buzzword then at least the Open Web Platform is what it says it is – a spade that is indeed a spade.
