HTML 5.1: Changes

Changes

This section summarises substantial substantive changes between Public Working Drafts, as a guide for general review.

Full details of all changes since 12 January 2016 are available from the commit log of the w3c/html github repository, including various editorial and linking fixes.

Changes since the 3 May 2016 Public Working Draft.

Changes to match implementation or reflect lack of it: Add oncopy /oncut /onpaste handling; Remove usemap attribute on object; Remove requestAutoComplete; HTML Fragment serialisation doesn’t throw; Allow header and footer elements to be nested if each level is within a sectioning element; Make the algorithm for forming a table closer to what implementations do with them; Remove multiple attribute on input type="range"; Remove IntersectionObservers; Remove canvasProxy, setContext from canvas; Make behaviour for fractional step values in stepUp and stepDown match reality; Allow empty option elements; mousewheel is now wheel; Remove appCache; Remove MediaController and mediagroup attribute; Change menu/type attribute token from popup to context; Restore the rev attribute, used by RDFa, and e.g. Schema.org; Remove the nested section h1 outline model; Removed style scoped
Changes related to other specifications: Integrate HTML longdesc; Use closed blob from File API; Integrate Resource Hints; Update HTMLAllCollection to match Web IDL; Integrate the encoding specification; Provide hooks to integrate CSP, and Realms from ECMAScript
Fixes for specification bugs: value attribute of input type="submit" is translatable; added requestAnimationFrame; Having title, or writing email to a friend is not sufficient to make an img conformant if the img/alt attribute is missing; Fix the content model for time; Add HTMLMediaElement/srcObject

Changes since the 12 April 2016 Public Working Draft.

Changes to match implementation or reflect lack of it: Removed seamless attribute on iframe; Removed table sorting; Clarify that respecting user preferences for track selection is valid; Allow figcaption anywhere within a figure (not just first or last); Remove special handling of isindex in form submission
Normative reference changes: Move from WCAG 1.0 to WCAG 2.0

Changes between the 12 April 2016 Public Working Draft and the 10 March 2016 Public Working Draft.

accesskey attribute only takes a single character: This is to match implementation in browsers better.
Add a callout to detach a media object in the media element load algorithm: This is to synchronise with MSE.
Remove microdata: There is a https://www.w3.org/TR/2013/NOTE-microdata-20131029/W3C Note describing Microdata as an extension.; Note that the attributes may be added back, referring to a Recommendation-track version of the extension, since there is a substantial amount of implementation.

Changes between the 10 March 2016 Public Working Draft and the 10 October 2015 Public Working Draft.

Full details of all changes since 12 January 2016 are available from the commit log of the w3c/html github repository. Note that a large number of changes made between 10 October and 12 January were copied direct from the whatwg/html repository.

Removed because implementation is not consistent and the idea didn’t make sense: form attribute on label element.
Removed for lack of implementation and to potentially improve before re-adding: accessKeyLabel IDL attribute.
Removed for lack of implementation: Blank alt on area elements with duplicate href attributes is no longer conformant.; Browsers don’t know about the user’s keyboard; Storage Mutex; navigator.yieldForStorageUpdates(); hreflang andtype attributes on area links; document.cssElementMap and DOMElementMap interface; document.commands IDL; master commands concept in menuitem; Command API and related concepts
Focus navigation fixed: When navigating internally, the next search for a link etc starts from where the navigation moved to - no longer optionally.
main refers to the body: As opposed to be allowed multiple times in the page, for other elements
More ways p can be automatigically closed
redefine "fully active" for a document: Require that a document has its own browsing context to be fully active
change currentSrc for images which don’t resolve: From the absolute URL to the URL given to the resolver
a is non-interactive if it has no href attribute
Fix Collections: HTMLFormControlsCollection not used for collections of fieldset elements; Instead fieldset makes an HTMLCollection; namedItem is an HTMLCollection not HTMLOptionsCollection
Supported tokens: Define supported tokens for link types and dropzone as those that have an impact on processing; add supported tokens for rel
Allow more cross-origin…: Enable cross-origin track and EventSource; Allow cross-origin content for ImageBitmap in canvas; let frameElement return null
Transferable objects can go to different domains
Make content of time consistent: There were contradictory requirements, now it is phrasing content, or text
Integration with the ES job queue: Defining EnqueueJob() and NextJob in a monkeypatch to ECMAScript.
Add missing events: Events and APIs for tracking promise rejection; event-source-error error for media fetching; event-track-error and event-track-load
Make navigator.javaEnabled() a method
Table cleanups: Add specific types for HTML table elements; .tFoot an .createTFoot() always insert at the end; Disallow tfoot before tbody
Clear autoplay flag once autoplaying: Otherwise odd things happened if the network changed
Cleaning up toBlob in canvas: Make the toBlob() callback non-nullable; Rename fileCallback to blobcallback
CSP hooks: Add hooks for property on global object; for inline events, styles; inline elements; update specification links
Flip modes (remote/local) in loading media resources
make origin on HTMLHyperlinkElementUtils and Location readonly
meta refresh parsing: Match Gecko better; make ; optional
Clean up SVG in HTML: describe the flavour of SVG used in browsers; Make SVG title first child not last
Scroll restoration
Add scroll restoration preferences to history traversal: Clarify manual scrolling restoration
Take account of srclang when rendering track
Windows without browsing context: window.open() can return null; Add "noopener" to rel and window
Move HTTPS state from window to document
Drop some IDL attributes: [Exposed=Window] for HTMLHyperLinkElementUtils; [Exposed=Window, Worker] for DOMStringMap; IDL Date
Add IDL [SameObject] for some objects that return collections
Make script IDL attributes reflect
Remove "no exception" step from HAVE_METADATA
Fix mismatched HTMLMediaElement currentTime exception: If there is a current media controller it can still throw…
setInterval() timers clear too
Cleanup Fullscreen
rename menu type="popup" as menu type="context"
Support width="0": For img and related elements, but not table cells

A description of substantial changes between the HTML 5.0 Recommendation of 2014 and the HTML 5.1 draft as it was in August 2015 is available as part of a separate document, that is no longer maintained.