THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATION, COMMUNITY, AND VALUES
By Michael Geraci
HTML, the markup language used to create Web pages is getting close to an evolutionary threshold. If that sounds like an intentionally ambiguous way of saying “it’s about to be upgraded to a new version” then please bear with me, for not only is HTML slowly shedding its old skin and adding to its genetic profile, it’s going to be doing so for the next 13 years. That’s right; HTML 5 is coming to a Web browser near you in 2022 [1].
While the above statement is technically true, it fails to point out the fact that certain elements that are in the HTML 5 language can be implemented right now, assuming you’ve done your homework and are willing to accept some level of minor disappointment. The fact is that this upgrade can’t happen overnight, but we don’t have to wait until it’s “done” to begin using the parts of it that have begun to find their way onto the Web.
You see, upgrading HTML from its current version 4 status to the next iteration is a big deal and is nothing at all like installing the newest version of your tried and true software applications or operating system and here’s why:
Another reason that upgrading HTML is infinitely tricky is a little harder to grasp. Unlike desktop software applications, no one industry or organization owns or has responsibility for the development of HTML. Nowhere was this more evident than during the first “browser war” [3] where Netscape and Microsoft fought for browser dominance by implementing their own versions of HTML that only worked in their products. An outcome from this dark period in Web history is the rise to prominence of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) which brought the myriad stakeholders together and pushed hard, along with the Web developer community, for a common set of standards by which sites could adhere to in order to render predictably on as many platforms as possible. The W3C does not create specifications as these are considered to be akin to “laws” in the software world, and the W3C does not pretend to have this authority over markup languages. Instead they make recommendations for markup languages and other associated technologies and, in the absence of real specifications, these hold a lot of weight in the Web development community.
It is the W3Cs involvement in the HTML 5 development that contributes to its pending availability as the standard for Web page markup, but not before almost leading to its demise.
When HTML 5 was proposed by a few of the major browser companies back in 2004 the W3C had no intention of working on it as they were focused on upgrading the current version of XHTML 1 that was quickly overshadowing the ten year-old HTML 4 standard as a more reliable and future-proof markup language. I realize that XHTML sounds a lot like HTML, but the addition of that X makes a world of difference. The languages are based on a different set of rules and are interpreted differently by browsers. In effect, we went from a very public browser war ten years ago to a somewhat low-key, and probably quite polite, language war in the more recent past. The good news: in 2007, the W3C joined with the WHATWG, the consortium developing the HTML 5 specification, and put XHTML 2 on the back burner, possibly forever [4]. With two very dedicated organizations carrying it forward, HTML 5 is quickly progressing to the point where Web developers can start to use it and end users may start to reap the benefits of the new language.
This newfound commitment to developing HTML 5 has yielded the following timeline [5]:
Despite how official all that sounds, the fact remains that enough has already been developed in HTML 5 that some of the major browsers have already started to support the more significant enhancements made possible in the new version: most notably, support for audio and video on Web pages without the need for third-party plug-ins. I realize that to most, this doesn’t appear like an enhancement to our daily Web lives, but remember that we access audio and video through the graces, and on-going maintenance of proprietary software from Adobe (Flash), Apple (QuickTime), and Microsoft (Window’s Media, Silverlight), to name a few. HTML 5 treats audio and video like it does text or images, it just works out of the box and Web page creators will be able to add their own user interface elements (playback controls, for example) without the need for authoring tools like Dreamweaver or Flash (some basic JavaScript will be required to create custom controls).
As of this writing, Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari browsers have the most support for HTML 5 with Mozilla Firefox and Opera running just slightly behind. To be clear, these browsers are only supporting a few of the dozens of enhancements promised under HTML 5, but each new update brings further refinements and additions to the level of HTML 5 that’s possible.
Still wondering exactly why you should even care about HTML 5? Come back to this space in the next edition of Interface and I’ll break it down for you, or if you can’t wait, check out the WHATWG’s site.
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