HTML5, jQuery, etc
Out of context: Reply #33
- Started
- Last post
- 43 Responses
- ukit0
Actually...the 2022 date is almost completely meaningless. I have heard that comment made more than a few times and Adobe even posted something similar on their blog, which is annoying because it adds to the confusion.
The official "ready" date in terms of the HTML5 spec is the Candidate Recommendation in 2012. At that point the spec is complete and ready to use.
Also even in terms of the 2012 date is that the parts of the spec they need to finish up are NOT the graphics/ UI aspects of it. They are the more developer-oriented stuff like web workers, microdata, and others. So by 2012 all of that will be done.
What happens from 2012 to 2022 is not writing new parts of the spec but the "test suite." Apparently they go through and test the spec in browsers in every possible implementation. Along with collecting feedback from companies and people developing HTML. You could compare it the process Apple or Microsoft go through in terms of maintaining an OS after its been released, making little tweaks here and there, and fixing bugs.
How they arrived at a timeline of 10 years for this, I'm not totally sure:) But it's more a behind the scenes part of the process that will likely be completely irrelevant to your average web developer. If they find something that totally doesn't work, they'll fix it, but they are not inventing new stuff from scratch or radically altering the spec.
You can read more on this in these interviews with Ian Hickson who is the "author" of the HTML5 spec. He talks about the testing process and how it is much different from HTML4.
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.co…
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.co…So what is holding HTML5 back in actually not, for the most part, the spec. It's the browsers implementing the spec and in particular IE. Microsoft could end of holding back the process a couple years or more in terms of really getting everyone on board. And possibly longer. Which is why I've started wondering lately if at least some companies will begin to move past the "we have to support everyone" mentality and start developing apps and websites that only work on modern browsers.