HTML5 on Track for W3C Finalization by Year's End -- Redmondmag.com

HTML5 on Track for W3C Finalization by Year's End

By Kurt Mackie
06/17/2014

The HTML5 Web specification that's used in browsers today is on track for "Recommendation" status, perhaps by year's end.

That progress report comes from Philippe Le Hégaret, head of the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C's) Interaction Domain group. Le Hégaret noted in a W3C blog post on Tuesday that the HTML Working Group is finding failures in just 3.3 percent of its 97,000 HTML5 tests. The failures are associated with how different browsers handle errors, but the differences won't "significantly affect interoperability of real-world running code," he added.

After two years of standards work on HTML5, and in response to those test results, the W3C is removing some features from HTML5, but those features will get rolled into a future HTML5.1 specification. Examples of the removed HTML5 features include the dialog element, the scoped style sheet, the DataCue interface, and the drag-and-drop feature, among others.

HTML5 is now at the "Last Call" phase of the W3C's process before reaching a planned "Proposed Recommendation" stage this fall. Last Call status means that the W3C is accepting comments about the HTML5 specification for a short time, until July 15, 2014. The comments can only be directed toward the changes that were made during the "Candidate Recommendation" phase of HTML5, Le Hégaret, clarified.

"Once the Working Group has addressed these final Last Call comments, the Chairs expect to move the document thru a final Candidate Recommendation and to Proposed Recommendation for final approval," explained Paul Cotton, director of standards assisting Microsoft Open Technologies and cochair of the W3C HTML Working Group, in a blog post. "Any features still lacking two interoperable implementations at the conclusion of the subsequent Candidate Recommendation period will be deferred to HTML 5.1."

The slow grinding work of developing Web standards will proceed, even beyond HTML5, which was noteworthy for enabling cross-platform Web application support. To that end, an Extensible Web Summit is planned for mid-September by the W3C where "the future of HTML" will be discussed.

About the Author

Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.

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