W3C Finalizes the Definition of HTML5 113
hypnosec writes "The Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) has announced that it has finalized the definition of HTML5 and that it is ready for interoperability testing. HTML5 hasn't been given the status of standard yet but it is feature complete now, giving developers a stable target to develop their web applications. The W3C said in the announcement 'HTML5 is the cornerstone of the Open Web Platform" and that it provides an environment which can utilize all of a device's capabilities like videos, animations, graphics and typography. The HTML5 specifications still have a long way to go before they hit the Recommendation status. HTML5 will have to go through a round of testing that looks specifically into interoperability and performance after which time it will be given a Candidate Recommendation title."
Re:Mayan Calendar was right (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Incorrect (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mayan Calendar was right (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't see this happening. There is a lot of user-generated content, mostly games and animations that are often uploaded to third party websites, like Newgrounds [newgrounds.com]. I don't think that any website on its right mind is going to allow Joe Developer to upload unverified javascript to their servers and post them publicly.
While it might be true that Canvas2D can display Flash in the enterprise environment, I don't think it can be a substitute for hobbyists who just want to publish their content. Not at this point anyway
Re:A half dozen years late courtesy of Firefox... (Score:4, Insightful)
You'll hate *much* more the day the H.264 licensing moster raises its ugly head.
Next round for starting asking for licensing fees is 2015
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing [wikipedia.org]
Re:Mayan Calendar was right (Score:2, Insightful)
The fact Flash is "a real application" is part of the problem. The fact it is controlled by a single corporation is another. This means the public cannot decide which platforms are supported, only Adobe can.
Web applications are so great because they are made up from a collection of parts that have nothing to do with each other, but are all available on different platforms. This ensures the web is completely platform independent, which makes it a great environment for applications. Sure, they might be wonky sometimes. But at least they'll run on your every single device you own, including your TV.
Re:Mayan Calendar was right (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact it is controlled by a single corporation is another
Yeah, in the face of Flash, all those loud-mouthed open-source guys (and other companies) did a fine job of making some good old fashioned competition.
Seriously. The alternatives to Flash were Java, millions of mal-ware infested media players, and eventually Silverlight. Everything either outright sucked, was mis-applied, or was too late to market to matter. Today, HTML5 is literally the only thing to go up against Flash, and HTML5 pretty much sucks. Just playing audio is a major challenge. just audio. That's pretty damn sad. The most revolutionary thing HTML5 has to offer is... a frame buffer? Really? It took this long?
Everyone else was wetting their pants about some mythical standards-compliant angel to come from the heavens and save us all, but they all either refused to work on it, or was too busy bitching over the proper color of the bike shed. No shit Flash took over the market.
I like Flash, despite its problems, because it actually works and works well. If it swamped the market, that was the fault of the market not responding and making something better.
Re:Mayan Calendar was right (Score:2, Insightful)
"Seriously, it's not even HTML, it's HTML plus other frameworks (codecs, javascript, etc)." So what? Does this offend you on a philosophical level? W3C already tried the "pure" approach with XHTML, and it was universally hated."
By who? In the business world it's still the standard even with the advent of HTML5, even over XHTML5 because it's the only professional HTML spec to date that actually caters to the needs of system developers who actually build the systems people use day in and day out. Because it's great for interop, and because data flows from it trivially and seamlessly from many data sources with XSLT.
The only people who seemed to whinge about it are Joe Public because it was too complicated for them but guess what? Joe Public isn't writing markup anymore, he's using Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress and so on to publish anyway.
Don't even try and pretend HTML5 is what developers need, it's an absolute fucking headache, it's the worst HTML spec since the HTML3 days or proprietary extensions and the amount of issues you have to deal with regarding browser compatibility relating to it are a thousand fold what they were with XHTML1.
About the only developers who seem happy about it are the browser developers who apparently don't get basic concepts like separation of concerns and whom stepping away from what they know (spaghetti markup) is too much for them, and a handful of rank amateurs who also don't get how to write great software.
"The web browser is a real application, and HTML5 represents nothing more than a standard way of providing instructions to that application."
Great except implementation is anything but standard, because despite some of the browser vendors being the driving force behind HTML5 they've still completely and utterly failed to implement it consistently.
"I'm not suggesting there is no value to Flash, but perhaps we can agree that there is room out there for more than one way to develop a web application?"
That depends, do you understand why your claim that XHTML was/is universally hated is patently false? If not then no we can't agree because you have absolutely zero knowledge of the will, needs, and concerns of the bulk of back end developers today.
HTML5 is a step backwards for most developers, working with it absolutely stinks of the peak of the Netscape/IE browser wars through to the IE6 days where you had to fight for hours to get a simple thing to look and work right across browsers.