Abstract
This specification defines the 5th major revision of the core language
of the World Wide Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this
version, new features are introduced to help Web application authors, new
elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring
practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear
conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve
interoperability.
Status of this document
This section describes the status of this document at the time of
its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of
current W3C publications and the most recently formally published revision
of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at
http://www.w3.org/TR/.
If you wish to make comments regarding this document, please send them
to public-html-comments@w3.org
(subscribe,
archives).
All feedback is welcome.
Implementors should be aware that this specification is not stable.
Implementors who are not taking part in the discussions are likely
to find the specification changing out from under them in incompatible
ways. Vendors interested in implementing this specification
before it eventually reaches the Candidate Recommendation stage should
join the aforementioned mailing lists and take part in the discussions.
The publication of this document by the W3C as a W3C Working Draft does
not imply that all of the participants in the W3C HTML working group
endorse the contents of the specification. Indeed, for any section of the
specification, one can usually find many members of the working group or
of the W3C as a whole who object strongly to the current text, the
existence of the section at all, or the idea that the working group should
even spend time discussing the concept of that section.
The changes made to this draft specification after the 22
January 2008 First Public Working Draft and this 10 June 2008
Working Draft are recorded in the following documents:
The following document is also available; it describes the
differences between HTML 5 and the previous major version of the
language, HTML 4:
The W3C HTML Working Group is
the W3C working group responsible for this specification's progress along
the W3C Recommendation track. This specification is the
10 June 2008 Working Draft.
This document was produced by a group operating under the 5 February
2004 W3C Patent Policy. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in
connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes
instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual
knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential
Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section
6 of the W3C Patent Policy.
Stability
Different parts of this specification are at different levels of
maturity.
Some of the more major known issues are marked like
this. There are many other issues that have been raised as well; the
issues given in this document are not the only known issues! There are
also some spec-wide issues that have not yet been addressed:
case-sensitivity is a very poorly handled topic right now, and the firing
of events needs to be unified (right now some bubble, some don't, they all
use different text to fire events, etc). It would also be nice to unify
the rules on downloading content when attributes change (e.g. src attributes) - should they initiate downloads when the
element immediately, is inserted in the document, when active scripts end,
etc. This matters e.g. if an attribute is set twice in a row (does it hit
the network twice).
Table of contents