How HTML5 Will Change the Web 208
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner looks beyond the codec and plug-in wars to examine nine areas where HTML5 will have a significant impact on Web development. From enabling more interactive graphics, to tapping local file storage, to geolocation, HTML5 is rife with rich capabilities — and may even improve our ability to secure applications delivered via the Web, Wayner writes. But the most important impact of HTML5 will be its ability to simplify Web development itself: 'HTML5 offers one language (JavaScript), one data model (XML and DOM), and one set of layout rules (CSS) to bind text, audio, video, and graphics. The challenge of making something beautiful is still immense, but it's simpler to work with a unified standard.'"
"Offers one way of doing things" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:"Offers one way of doing things" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I love flashblock (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As always... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I love flashblock (Score:3, Insightful)
I think I'll just put the canvas tags right besides the body tags and save myself a lot of work instead of dealing with this whole Aech Tee emm Ell thing.
too bad its runs different in all browsers (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:HTML5 Will Help Change The Web (Score:5, Insightful)
The core assumption that users cared about filling correct metadata was wrong outside the research community (and even outside the IT research community). It will take off but you need software to fill in what was assumed users would do.
Security? (Score:5, Insightful)
HTML5 will improve security
While I love many things about HTML5, the idea of throwing out rendering libraries and starting again from scratch does not necessarily fill one with confidence about the security of the tools. Sure, less reliance on plug-ins means less opportunities for 3rd party security holes. But doing everything in the browser code itself also means that the potential attack vectors have more direct control over the machine. Plus any new library is going to have security vulnerabilities for a while.
I'm not saying HTML5 is insecure. But let's not kid ourselves: there will be a year or two of scrambling to fix new attack vectors.
Re:"Offers one way of doing things" (Score:3, Insightful)
What happened was that xhtml2 had two flaws.
1: errors were treated like errors. That means that broken hacks made by graphic artists would result in an error message instead of a random attempt to render a broken document. This also made creating a partial implementation more difficult.
2: No one implemented a reference implementation. So that web browser vendors would have to do all the heavy lifting.
WHATWG formed and decided to take all the hacked errors and random implementations of browsers and make those errors the standard, then they added some cruft on top. Thus HTML5 was born. For some reason, W3C then abandoned the superior standard of XHTML2 and adopted the steaming pile that WHATWG dumped on them.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Insightful)
***HTML5 will allow applications to tap local file storage***
Once or twice a decade I encounter a "They can't possibly be serious" moment. This is one of those occasions.
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Re:"Offers one way of doing things" (Score:3, Insightful)
You contradict yourself. How "standard" (as in "pile of paper") can be superior to actually working implementation?
I hope you're not a software developer. The world is full of 'actual working implementations' which have caused years of pain for the sake of not spending a few days thinking it through on a 'pile of paper' before implementing, and then 'not having the time' to rewrite it once the blatant design flaws become obvious.
Most of the worst ideas in the history of the web have come from taking some web browser's 'working implementation' and making it part of a standard.
Re:Chickens and eggs (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a wise choice I'm not sure others will follow. If possible, it's always best to use the oldest specs that are still supported that will actually do what you want the page to do.
As to chickens and eggs, the egg came first, as any palientologist or biologist will tell you. Chickens aren't the only animals that lay eggs. It's ok if your egg lays dinasaurs, as long as the dinasaur is well trained.
Re:The one real data model: XML (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue isn't that it's not possible, the issue is that HTML5 seems to tend towards HTML markup over XML markup.
Effectively it pushes bad practice as standard because there really is no benefit to HTML markup other than the ability to write sloppy markup, which is stupid.
People publish using tools nowadays, leave markup to the professionals (not that writing well formed XML is hardly a difficult job). If people can't understand how to write well formed XML markup then they've got no chance of understanding CSS and Javascript so might as well give up and use a web app to publish for them anyway.
Best to support the people who actually write web apps to make it easier to write better web apps, than to support sloppy developers who use HTML markup "because it's easier".
Re:One standard does not mean one interpretation (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it will make the situation better. It takes the real web into account, and standardizes behaviors that are already in use out there. At the same time, the spec is much clearer and easier to implement correctly because it also specifies error handling and such. In other words, the opposite of your FUD.
No, the spec has been written to be clear to implementors how they should implement it properly.
Ok, so Google, Apple, Mozilla and Opera have no real experience from large scale software development? Heh.
Re:I love flashblock (Score:4, Insightful)
You're joking, but I actually foresee this being used very widely to block copy/paste and web scraping.
Re:The one real data model: XML (Score:1, Insightful)
There may be nothing stopping me from using well-formed XML in my HTML5, but I won't be scraping my own website. I'll be scraping other people's, who very possibly aren't using well-formed XML. It's not just a question of what it lets me, as a fairly knowledgeable and responsible developer, do.