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Programming The Internet

It's Official: HTML5 Is a W3C Standard 125

Posted by timothy from the well-that's-a-strong-word dept.
rjmarvin (3001897) writes The Worldwide Web Consortium today has elevated the HTML5 specification to 'recommendation' status , giving it the group's highest level of endorsement, which is akin to becoming a standard. The W3C also introduced Application Foundations with the announcement of the HTML5 recommendation to aid developers in writing Web applications, and said the organization is working with patents holders of the H.264 codec to agree on a baseline royalty-free interoperability level commitment.
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It's Official: HTML5 Is a W3C Standard More

It's Official: HTML5 Is a W3C Standard

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  • Well, that's cool I guess (Score:5, Insightful)

    by halivar ( 535827 ) <bfelger@nOSPAM.gmail.com> on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @09:57AM (#48250923)

    But it's already a de facto standard. I think W3C's clout in this area is diminished because the market already decided it was a standard long before they did.

    • Re:Well, that's cool I guess (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tuffy ( 10202 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @10:07AM (#48250997) Homepage Journal

      Turning de facto standards that have been implemented in actual browsers into a formal specification is how standards work best.

      Coming up with a specification first and hoping someone will be able to implement it is how we wound up with Perl 6.

      • Turning de facto standards that have been implemented in actual browsers into a formal specification is how standards work best.

        It's funny, back in the day all everyone did on /. was bitch and moan every time MS implemented anything in IE that wasn't W3C standard. Now that it's not THE EVIL MICROSOFT doing it, suddenly everyone is all "FUCK W3C!!!"

        • Re:Well, that's cool I guess (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @11:35AM (#48251827)

          Lets not forget where XmlHttpRequest came from...

        • Re:Well, that's cool I guess (Score:4, Insightful)

          by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @11:43AM (#48251935) Homepage

          Well, to put that into perspective ... Microsoft used to sit on standards boards, and before the standard was finalized they'd file submarine patents, and do their own implementation which was already not compliant and had proprietary extensions.

          So, when Microsoft was doing it, it really was evil ... ha ha ha, thanks for telling us how to implement this, now we've patented it, and we're already extending it for our own purposes.

          There were a bunch of years where Microsoft never found a standard they couldn't completely fsck up for their own interests.

          Microsoft used to do it to shit on the standards process and give themselves something which didn't work with anything else -- because Microsoft didn't want standards to succeed. If it wasn't theirs, it needed to be destroyed.

          • Re:Well, that's cool I guess (Score:5, Interesting)

            by KingMotley ( 944240 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @01:15PM (#48253217) Journal

            Please show an example where Microsoft sat on a standards body and then patented something regarding that spec, because as much as you'd like to believe this is true, it simply isn't. You have this backwards. Microsoft often had patents relating to things they sat on a standards body for (much like everyone else on that committee), and in most cases had already implemented a version of it before the committee was formed, let alone ratified anything. In some cases, they implemented something that was being discussed prior to ratification (which takes years), and then the standards body changed their minds and made changes to the standard before ratifying it. And in other cases, Microsoft implemented functionality that was already prevalent in the marketplace (another companies work -- usually netscape), and the standards body came up with a different, incompatible solution to the same thing.

            If you have an example (any example) of what you say, I'd like to hear it, because I've never found any evidence of it, yet.

          • On the other hand, the W3C Patent Policy makes it impossible for MS to do that --- they must either disclose their patents and notify the group that they are withholding them from the royalty-free grant within 180 days of certain points of the spec's development or they grant all members of the group an irrevocable RF grant (the intention of the policy is you give a list of all patents you have covering the spec and whether you're withholding them; in practice most people don't even look at patent portfolio

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by tuffy ( 10202 )
          Browsers pushing stuff outside the standard may have given us the <marquee> and <blink> tags, but it also gave us the <table> tag. The good thing about having a standards body is that it can incorporate the useful stuff into the next standard while (hopefully) relegating the junk to permanent outcast status.
        • If only Microsoft had of gotten its way 15 years ago, we would of had:

          {
          width:21px;
          padding:5px;
          margin:5px;
          border: 1px solid black;
          }
          Where the total width is what you say it is: 21px. Instead we have the stupidity that the actual width is 32px. and paddings, margins et al ADD to the defined width instead of being a part of the element. Which makes calculating dimensions in HTML a fucking pain in the ass.

          • Damn, 43px, ( 21 + 5x2 + 5x2 + 1x2 ). See just plain bullshit.

          • { box-sizing:border-box; width:21px; padding:5px; margin:5px; border:1px solid black; }

            Doesn't include the margins (none of the options do), but your bordered box will be 21 pixels wide (inclusive of borders). box-sizing:padding-box; makes it 21 pixels excluding borders.

            • Thanks, I forgot about that. At least it wasn't added to the "display" property. And there's less need for browser specific css extensions:

              -webkit-box-sizing: border-box; /* Safari/Chrome, other WebKit */
              -moz-box-sizing: border-box; /* Firefox, other Gecko */

          • Where the total width is what you say it is: 21px. Instead we have the stupidity that the actual width is 32px. and paddings, margins et al ADD to the defined width instead of being a part of the element. Which makes calculating dimensions in HTML a fucking pain in the ass.

            What happens if the total width you declare is less than the combined width of paddings, margins and borders? Which seems likely, if addition is such a "pain in the ass" for you, especially when CSS inheritance rules come to play.

            Also, a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by brunes69 ( 86786 )

        The difference is, when Apple and Google and Mozilla do something, they are seldom working in a vaccum. They work together for the most part on emerging web technologies and push them forward. There are a few outliers like HTML5 video where there is a lot of vested interest, but if you look at it objectively, this is nowhere near the EEE mantra of Microsoft.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Euler ( 31942 )

        Paper standards are worthless 9 times out of 10; typically they are full of ambiguity or have stipulations that are grossly inefficient to implement. There is a necessary research phase to writing airtight, or even usable specs. I call this 'implementation.' So yes, de-facto specifications are the best. You could do the research phase and just throw away the resulting code and test results, but why do that? So the only use I have for a standards body is to perform quality-control on the existing docume

    • Your'e not giving enough credit to the organization that enabled you to write comments that look this c o o l

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Don't blame the W3C for the fact that "the market" took so long to implement HTML5 support. This news is about the W3C standard being upgraded to "recommendation" status, which happens only after web browsers finally adopt it.

    • W3C's clout: they can keep DRM outside (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ciaran2014 ( 3815793 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @10:27AM (#48251197) Homepage

      W3C still has an important role: they're the standards body.

      We've been telling governments for years to use open standards and HTML is often held up as a shining example. A lot of governments have even made commitments to using open standards but if W3C announces that DRM is part of HTML, then governments will accept DRM and they'll think/claim they're doing what we asked with regard to open standards.

      So we need to keep telling W3C that we don't want DRM in HTML. And when W3C says "Oh, but Netflix really wants DRM", we just reply that this doesn't require blessing from W3C.

      FSF is almost the only organisation campaigning on this: https://www.defectivebydesign.... [defectivebydesign.org]

      • Without some form of digital restrictions management, how is movie rental supposed to work? Or is there some other way to keep end users from teeing the video into a copy that remains usable longer than the agreed-upon rental period?

        • Let me fix that for you: why is movie rental supposed to work? Just because a business model made sense at one point for a particular medium does that mean that it will continue to do so moving forward, nor that artificial restrictions should be placed on innovation to force existing business models to soldier on.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tepples ( 727027 )
            For movies other than cult classics and children's animated movies, I imagine that most people prefer to watch a movie only once, not multiple times for the indefinite future. People don't want to buy stuff anymore [wired.com]. So just to make sure I don't misunderstand your post, let me restate it in my own words: In the interest of eliminating digital restrictions management, you expect people to pay full price to buy a durable copy even if they want to watch it only once. Do I understand you correctly?

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by tilk ( 637557 )
              Right now there is no difference between a "durable copy", as you say, than just watching - in both cases exactly the same data needs to go between the service provider and the end user. Therefore there is no longer a need to distinguish the two, and anything else is just crippling the product - a questionable practice for physical items, but somehow okay for digital data.

              A message for the media companies: just let me pay for the damn file! I'm probably going to only watch it once, but if I do not, you s

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by Rakarra ( 112805 )

                Therefore there is no longer a need to distinguish the two, and anything else is just crippling the product

                Copyright has always been about crippling what the non-copyright-holder can do with a product. That's its entire purpose, and has been that way for hundreds of years. It's not new compared to digital media.

            • For movies other than cult classics and children's animated movies, I imagine that most people prefer to watch a movie only once, not multiple times for the indefinite future.

              If this is true, then there's no real reason to worry about someone cluttering their hard drive with video files they're never going to watch again, now is there?

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by tepples ( 727027 )
                Movie studios have traditionally price discriminated, offering a limited viewing window at a lower price than an indefinite window.

                • Movie studios have traditionally price discriminated, offering a limited viewing window at a lower price than an indefinite window.

                  Which, according to yourself [slashdot.org], are the exact same product as far as the consumer is concerned. Either those gosh darn pirates keep defenseless widdle DRM-free rentals forever so they don't have to shell out for a "durable copy" or it's extremely important that rentals exist because people don't want to watch movies more than once (altough it's still unclear why video rentals sho

        • > Without some form of digital restrictions management,
          > how is movie rental supposed to work?

          DRM can exist without W3C's blessing. The big players can even agree on a common interface without W3C's blessing.

          My previous comment wasn't about whether DRM should exist (in my opinion, it shouldn't), it was about W3C not needing to bless DRM and call it part of an "open standard".

          There's no contradiction in DRM-accepters supporting the campaign to get DRM removed from W3C's specifications of open standard

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Xtifr ( 1323 )

          Without some form of digital restrictions management, how is movie rental supposed to work?

          DRM currently works without being part of the HTML standard. (See, e.g., Netflix.) Why would not including it in a newer version of the HTML standard suddenly make it stop working?

          • Why would not including it in a newer version of the HTML standard suddenly make it stop working?

            It wouldn't stop working, but needing to develop new apps for multiple platforms currently acts as a barrier to entry to new video providers. Right now each video provider needs a separate app for each client platform, and each client platform needs a separate app for each video provider. This is a Cartesian product situation, which grows at O(n^2). If you have 15 platforms and 15 providers, you need 225 apps. Standardizing digital restrictions management for video would allow the use of one app on each pla

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Xtifr ( 1323 )

              It wouldn't stop working, but needing to develop new apps for multiple platforms currently acts as a barrier to entry to new video providers.

              That's a reasonable argument for standardizing encryption/DRM, but not a reasonable argument for making it part of the HTML standard. Rolling your own encryption is indeed a crappy idea, but the solution is to create an encryption/drm standard, rather than hijacking some only-vaguely-related standard and trying to cram it in there. Especially since encryption/drm needs to work with more than just html.

    • IIRC, HTML5 had problems getting motion in the first place because the major vendors were having trouble playing nice. W3C made a decision to step back and let them work it out, in the understanding that they'd step back in when a standard emerged.

    • This is more or less how technology standards work. Would you say the IEEE has no clout because manufacturers ship hardware while the standard is still in draft?

    • But there is not an official standard to point to when your least favorite browser isn't rendering properly.

      The neat thing about following a standard, is you get standard results.

    • Yes, and no. The market took what was available for HTML5 and as before implemented it in various interpretations making the rendering engines and browsers behave differently in so many areas that it makes a mockery of a standard. There is currently not a single browser available that fully supports HTML5 and CSS3. I test web apps and it just sucks that after passing all tests in Chrome a bunch of them fail in Firefox and half of them fail in IE and then Safari on OS X is totally different again. The sole p
  • It's so sad that some are still stuck on older versions of IE (South Korea).
    Especially when there are two free and better alternatives...
    A customer of my company now want's us to make an app we made working for IE 9 :(

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I's it an app that add's erroneou's apo'strophe's to word's?

  • Java's demise (Score:3)

    by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @10:06AM (#48250995) Journal

    One can only hope more appliance producers will ditch Java for HTML5 web interfaces... configuring SAN switches has become a freaking pain in the butt.

    • Not being a SAN appliance user myself, I'm curious to know what form of Java are you encountering? If they have a Java config application you install on your PC, then it sounds like they have a crappy UI and my guess is that a language change won't help them program a better one. If however they are serving up a Java applet from an embedded server within the appliance then I guess they could use an update because the last time I saw an applet in the wild I fell off my stegosaurus in shock.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by 2fuf ( 993808 )

      Yeah totally, imagine: having to fire up a 10 year old VirtualPC to run the outdated OS that runs the outdated browser that uses the outdated Javascript engine to configure your switch. What an improvement over Java that will be :-)

  • WHY THE LINK ISN'T WORKING (Score:5, Informative)

    by rjmarvin ( 3001897 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @10:07AM (#48251001)
    The W3C was unclear about the embargo time for the news, and as a result the story has been pulled for the moment. It will be live again at 10am PST/1pm EST.

    • Re:WHY THE LINK ISN'T WORKING (Score:5, Funny)

      by jeffb (2.718) ( 1189693 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @10:31AM (#48251217)

      If they're actually specifying the embargo time in Eastern or Pacific Standard Time, even though most of the US remains on Daylight Saving Time until Sunday Nov 2, the confusion may last a bit longer than they expect.

      I love the way the link leads to a "sorry we can't find it, here are some suggestions..." page, with the first suggestion being the very same link, which produces the very same result. Okay, maybe I was looking for an error page.

  • It's Official: HTML5 Is a W3C Standard (Score:4, Funny)

    by null etc. ( 524767 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @10:15AM (#48251065)
    That was fast.

  • Not found. (Score:3)

    by jafuser ( 112236 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @10:15AM (#48251077)

    The article is 404'd and I'm not seeing any other news of this. Did someone jump the gun? The w3c page [w3.org] still says "proposed recommendation".

  • They are always the last to recognize standards. Everyone else has moved on. The W3C is run like a government bureaucracy, too slow, no real-world pressures on them to up the pace, and no accountability. Who gives a shit what they elevate or recognize any more.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Uh. No standard written by the W3C is final until there are at least two complete implementations in browsers. In addition, the W3C is composed of all the browser vendors who also write those standards.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bazmail ( 764941 )
        Uh No. Sure Google and MS etc have seats on the board, but it does not consist entirely of browser vendors.

  • have mercy on your soul.

  • Where's the schema (DTD/XML Schema/Relax NG)? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by oever ( 233119 ) on Tuesday October 28, 2014 @10:41AM (#48251303) Homepage

    Where's the schema (DTD/XML Schema/Relax NG)?

    Answer: there is no schema. Validating documents seems to have gone out of fashion. Writing a parser for HTML5 is extremely difficult. Basically the broken parsing behavior of old browsers is now standardized in a crazy arcane description of how to parse HTML5 documents.

    http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/syn... [w3.org]

    Who benefits from such crazy parsing rules? The current browsers. This raises the bar for entry.

    • Actually the current browsers have a lot to lose with crazy parsing rules. Lots of edge cases, writing lots of nasty hacks to get around various markup bugs...

      Even it does mean higher bar of entry, the bar's pretty high anyway because even if we did have schema parsing, the render piece really is the hard part.

      Who does this benefit? Lazy crappy godawful web developers.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      Who benefits from such crazy parsing rules?

      But so do end users who want to view existing pages and anyone with existing pages but perhaps not terribly well designed and implemented web pages / applications.

      There is so much tag soup out there, its hard to image some new schema validating strict rendering browser being very useful out side of the leading ecom sites. The fact is lots of really valuable information is still sitting around on home pages at universities and elsewhere on personal blogs etc that is a mess of barely parse-able tags; yet tod

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by spiralx ( 97066 )

      But it's easier to parse HTML5 than it was any previous version of HTML, as there is now an actual specification which details the process exactly rather than relying on each browser's interpretation. It can't be that difficult given the number of working parsers and validators out there for HTML5.

      Plus, HTML5 can already be written using XML syntax, aka XHTML5 [w3.org]. And searching for xhtml5.xsd [grepcode.com] or xhtml5.rng [github.com] gave me plenty of links to schemas for validating XML-syntax HTML5.

      If you need to store validated docume

  • Great news! I'm a strong html5/javascript advocate. 6 months ago, I released a mobile WEB app to create mobile web apps (http://adsy.me). We've already signed up 22,300 users, a pretty nice proof of concept for an open web project, outside the native walled gardens. It works on ios/ANDROID/pc, a true cross-platform app. I believe it's the future, in a post-appstores era (here is a piece I wrote about this: https://medium.com/@adsy_me/7-... [medium.com])
  • Meanwhile, I am toying with creating a pre-browser or embedded filter that removes all tags beyond what Slashdot permits, then feeds that reduced set to the display functions. I am sick and tired of trying to throttle back wacko behavior one fekking feature at a time. Or does such already exist (for Firefox or Chrome?)

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