Google Introduces HTML 5.1 Tag To Chrome 94
darthcamaro (735685) writes "Forget about HTML5, that's already passe — Google is already moving on to HTML5.1 support for the upcoming Chrome 38 release. Currently only a beta, one of the biggest things that web developers will notice is the use of the new "picture" tag which is a container for multiple image sizes/formats. Bottom line is it's a new way to think about the "IMG" tag that has existed since the first HTML spec."
talk about "old tech" (Score:3, Informative)
So now we have a relabeled "TIFF" container?
Tagged Interchange File Format (TIFF) has been around since the 1980s; the Amiga had a nice version, and I used them in a very old document system for the US Navy. The file could hold multiple instances of the same data, in different formats. A picture could be JPEG, GIF, a PDF bitmap, ..., for example, and the platform displayed/printed whatever it could.
Re:5.1? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:srcset attribute (Score:5, Informative)
This allow to change the img source according to media queries, which is not possible using CSS and/or the img tag.
No 5.1 - don't let versions get popular! (Score:5, Informative)
The 5.1 label was just to separate it out, the intention of most was to have it live so that there is no new version. As you probably know already, most the major stuff is not directly under HTML5 but are side groups which either are under HTML5 or they are separate but are treated like they are part of HTML5 (openGL or web sockets for example.) New tags like MAIN, DETAIL, FIGURE or PICTURE, well those ended up in HTML5 but were not around or changed quite a bit. Firefox still doesn't support DETAIL even though it has had decent documentation for quite a while now (it didn't for a long time...)
The mature people involved realized that version numbers do not mean a whole lot because vendors market themselves as supporting "STANDARD X.Y" but lack full support or correct support (MS being a great example.) There is little practical reason for versions because they do not mean a whole lot and real world developers have to work around mixed user support anyway.
If you don't like the PICTURE tag, try to get HTTP 1 & 2 to finally finish the drafts on image sizes so we can do the content negotiation on the server; where it belongs. The whole reason this came about was there was no smart way to get IMG to handle it and there is a use case where CSS media queries (which is not really css 3.x either) do not work. You should be using CSS but when you can't PICTURE is what you use if you can't configure your server (I would suggest some JS that sets a cookie until the browsers finally start sending the info.)
Re:talk about "old tech" (Score:5, Informative)
It's much more than that; the images contained in a TIFF file cannot be downloaded separately while the images contained in a picture-tag can. This way I don't have to wait for ages when browsing on my phone while I can still enjoy top quality images on my desktop. That was already possible by allowing the webserver to serve a different pictures based on the User Agent, but that's ugly and it doesn't allow the user to choose the bigger file after all. Furthermore, this new tag allows the browser to select an image based on the speed of the connection, potentially making the web much more responsive in general.
Re:5.1? (Score:5, Informative)
It's a bit more complicated.
The big standards organisation is W3C. They only call it a standard after everyone agrees on what the standard is and there are implementations in the field that prove that the model works. In that sense they are a bit like the IETF. Part of the IETF motto (TAO): "We believe in rough consensus and running code".
So in the case of HTML5, all browsers will implement the parts of the HTML5 they want to first and only when there are multiple implementations of a feature/part of the HTML5 standard, everyone agrees on what that part of the standard should look like and the documents are ready will W3C rubber stamps it a standard.
So you can already use it before it is a standard. Most parts, by now probably pretty much all of it, of the specification is stable. They are just changing documents to improve working and adding clarifications.
Using the implementations is actually encouraged, because the vendors want to see how it is being used to know if the specification actually works in the way it was intended. Or if it is just to complicated to work with.
Then you have the WHATWG, which is a number of browser vendors (Mozilla, Opera, Microsoft, Webkit/Blink) sitting together creating new HTML5 ideas and standards documents. Those standards documents can eventually be used as a basis by the W3C.
The WHATWG was formed when the W3C, a long time ago, said: all HTML will be XML based in the future. And basically said: HTML is a document format. The WHATWG said: no, way. Let's start a new group of people, because we don't want to deal with strict XML and we actually make it possible to let the web be an application delivery platform.
So really HTML5 pretty much is done. All the browser implementations are done, except for support of certain parts or features.
HTML 5.1 is just a working document title. It is just a set of new features being added to HTML 5 which will end up as part of HTML5.
Fun fact about the picture element is: it did not come out of the WHATWG or W3C or browser vendors, it came out of a community of webdevelopers to create 'responsive images'. A problem that didn't have a good solution yet.
Responsive images is about downloading a the right size of image based on the device it will be displayed on.
It's nit picking but... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:nail in W3C coffin (Score:4, Informative)
Not to spoil your rant, but the picture tag is defined here: http://www.w3.org/html/wg/draf... [w3.org]
Notice the hostname.
Re:nail in W3C coffin (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the HTML5 specifications gets developed here first:
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/we... [whatwg.org]
Then eventually after a long process will end up here:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/ [w3.org]
However Picture-tag actually came from the community first, not the W3C or the vendors directly:
http://responsiveimages.org/ [responsiveimages.org] only later did it become http://www.w3.org/community/re... [w3.org] and later became part of the HTML5-specification.