This is the W3C statement of direction concerning HTML. It is in the W3C activity list as part of the User Interface Domain.
HTML is a data format for exchanging documents on the Web. It provides interoperability between a number of products that cover a wide range of applications: word processing, collaborative authoring, data base publishing, interactive applications, and more.
There is perhaps no more controversial area in Web standards than HTML extensions.
W3C plays a vital role in the evolution of HTML by both stimulating development in critical directions and providing a forum where competing parties can meet to reach a consensus about new features.
Among the extensions currently under discussion are rich forms and interactive documents, the ability for pages to be changed dynamically via scripting, frames and subsidiary windows, improved access to HTML features for people with disabilities, multimedia objects, and mathematics. Richer representations for meta-data are being developed by W3C's DSIG working group.
The web presents readers with a consistent view of a diverse, distributed set of information sources. HTML is a critical technology in making this possible. It should satisfy the needs of all applications where document interchange is essential, from hypertext electronic mail to data base publishing.
In order to support the common needs of information providers for publishing and delivering services over the Web, HTML, in combination with style sheets, must have rich expressive power and visual impact. These needs include everything from casual communication to technical documentation to entertainment, advertising, and marketing.
HTML must also provide a simple user interface for interactive applications, such as order forms and database queries.
At the same time, HTML must be simple. The simplicity of HTML has been critical to the widespread deployment of the web. HTML is simple enough that thousands of people learned to edit the markup by hand. That in itself may be a passing phenomenon. But that same simplicity allowed thousands of developers to make HTML interchange part of their systems: from desktop software to database integration to embedded systems and set-top boxes. And the ability of people to spot and correct errors contributes to the overall robustness of the web.
HTML should remain, as far as practical, backwards compatible with existing documents. Each new feature is evaluated carefully to understand how it interacts with the deployed base of software and documents, in order to provide smooth, continuous evolution of the web.
While many formats express documents strictly in terms of placement of marks on a page, the use of descriptive markup idioms such as paragraphs, heading, and lists allows HTML documents to be rendered effectively on a variety of platforms, and for a diverse audience. The capabilities and constraints of a variety of platforms contribute to the design of HTML:
Requirements concerning Access for People with Disabilities are the subject of a W3C activity of their own.
In order to meet those requirements, we have identified a number of products, or deliverables. Specifications of the current version of the language is obviously one of them, but there are other deliverables that could help to reach a common understanding of all users and producers of HTML documents. Depending on available resources, not all of these deliverables will be developed by W3C, but all are desirable:
In particular, we have identified that specifications addressing the following features are critical to meet the requirements above. The W3C HTML Working Group has produced a number of working drafts, which will be incorporated into future versions of the HTML specification:
The long term goal is to bring HTML-based forms up to par with contemporary database application development tools and to develop open specifications for transferring new kinds of interactive documents over the web.
In the future, we expect designers will want different layout for the same document depending on the medium:
We are investigating CSS extensions to allow the same document to be presented using different layouts. See WD-style and WD-positioning. Further information can be found on the W3C Style Sheets activity page.
For example, typed links can represent navigational and structural idioms such as tables of contents, indexes, and glossaries. In addition to enhanced browsing, this meta-information can be exploited by search services to increase the precision of searches and the relevance of the search results. Hard copy tools can exploit these structures to automate printing collections of pages.
"Dynamic HTML" is a term used by some vendors to describe the combination of HTML, style sheets and scripts that allows documents to be animated. W3C has received several submissions from members companies on how the object model of HTML documents should be exposed to scripts. These submissions do not propose any new HTML tags or style sheet technology. The DOM-WG is working hard to make sure interoperable and scripting-language neutral solutions are agreed upon.
Implementation experience is critical to the development of quality specifications. In addition to the experience of engineers in member organizations, the W3C staff develops and maintains Amaya, an editor/browser with support for style sheets. Its open-ended architecture is well suited to make experiments for new HTML features. See the Amaya Activity Statement for background and plans.
The W3C staff no longer maintains Arena, though the source code remains freely available.
A number of other products critical to the overall success of the W3C HTML activity are covered in other activity statements:
We have made considerable progress toward the deliverables outlined above:
W3C plays a role in many stages of the development of HTML. We stimulate development in directions that we feel are critical to the evolution of the web by drafting proposals and prototyping new features. Meanwhile, new features also enter the market directly in beta releases and products.
The features then go through an experimental deployment phase. In many cases, the information providers find the features very valuable, and competition demands that they be supported. In other cases, the features aren't picked up by the information providers nor the other implementors. Once a number of vendors support the feature, it's appropriate for W3C to document it as a recommendation.
W3C plays a vital role in facilitating the consensus process, providing a neutral forum, as well as editing and engineering resources.
The work started by the HTML Working Group has been split into the form of a number of more focused working groups:
These groups are working on the next version of HTML (code named Cougar) and extensions to CSS. Just as HTML 3.2 consolidated a number of work items, we intend to collect a number of proposals which are currently under discussion.