HTML5: The jewel in the Open Web Platform
Over the past two weeks, I traveled across the U.S. from New York to San Francisco to talk about HTML5 with developers and W3C member organizations. This continues my global tour which has also taken me earlier to France and Japan. I am inspired by the enthusiasm for the suite of technical standards that make up what W3C calls the 'Open Web Platform.' The Open Web Platform to us is HTML5, a game-changing suite of tools that incorporates SVG, CSS and other standards that are in various stages of development and implementation by the community at W3C. Recent demos show the potential of certain features of HTML5, however, the platform in its entirety is still a work in progress. At this stage, community feedback plays an important role in ensuring that the HTML5 specification is the highest quality.
The power of this platform is that it is so comprehensive. The challenge presented by HTML5, which I mentioned a month ago, is the need to test, refine and mature certain aspects of the specification in order to support the early adopters, the innovators and the engineers who are embracing this technology today.
Recently I wrote about the HTML5 WG's decision to move the HTML5 specification to last call in May of next year. As a result of this milestone, W3C opened a call to developers to submit their issues by October 1, in order to speed the process of standardization and implementation of HTML5 as early as possible. In addition, because HTML5 is seeing early adoption, there is a need to refine the draft specification to support the work of those who are pushing this technology out into the public domain.
From week to week, we see promising examples of the potential of HTML5 demonstrated by impressive displays of 3D animation, navigation and video technologies. There is not a single month when W3C does not receive a request to extend APIs in order to address new functionalities. The video community is requesting more features in our support of HTML5 video (more metadata support, chapters, quality feedback). The television industry is just starting to think about having APIs to control television channels or the TV remote. The electronic book industry would like to have better text support, in particular vertical text, in CSS. Several companies met this week to talk about supporting audio and video teleconferencing in HTML (ICE, STUN, notification API for incoming calls, etc.). Our newly created Web Performance Working Group had a very fruitful face-to-face this week, to discuss latency measurements related to user navigation. The work and the speed of the Working Group is literally a race against clock, with the plan of finalizing the API in the next 4 to 6 months.
The adoption of HTML5 by browser vendors and other members of the IT community is an important factor in the ongoing traction of the platform. We want to hear from those already working with the draft specification so we can use the test cases to identify interoperability issues that need to be addressed leading up to last call in May of next year. It is because of your work and feedback that W3C can build the solid foundation for the Web's continuing evolution. Please provide your feedback by using the HTML5 public bug database.
I'm thinking since a while (french post : http://braincracking.org/2010/01/22/features-html5-appel-aux-armes-pour-les-librairies-js/) that what the webdev's world and the W3C need right now is a JS implementation of the HTML5 APIs, when it's possible (that mean 80% of the spec).
Webdevs are in a production stressful environment : some braves make demos with the new APIs, few of them put them into production and very few of them give feedback to the W3C. Most of them wait for the browsers to implement fully HTML5 and IE8 to disappear ...
so what could speed up most of HTML5 features adoption and provide you more feedback from the tranchees would be a library implementing the API as defined in the current drafts, detecting native browser implementation and fallbacking to what's appropriate (hidden flash pieces most of the time ...)
it's probably rather the community's role to write it rather than the W3C, but for now there is various individual initiative (look at that long libraries list : http://github.com/Modernizr/Modernizr/wiki/HTML5-Cross-browser-Polyfills), what the community need is a meta library or project coordinating and regrouping those small specialized libs, to ease the access to other web developers
Maybe the W3 could arrange that ?
For me personally, I hope the perfect browser with the following features ?hope that we express their views:
Add the following functions aimed at improving the performance of web applications, application development to improve usability and development efficiency
A, JS api
1, support the Object to the json data format conversion
2, support Object to the url encoding, conversion (key does not encode, value automatically encoded as follows: in such a way) to support the url decoding format to Object conversion
3, Ajax Asynchronous further package, able to directly send Object, or the Form object, automatically converted to a form of data format, can support with the submission of documents
4, support large collection of data sorting, filtering, easy to do large data fast multi-column table sorting, filtering
5, Array support the iterative and indexOf, filter
6, from the key --- alue Object quickly fill out the form to the form the form, providing quick transition from the form for the key - value of the Object
Second, HTML dom api and some other
1, supports XPath, css selector to select the API, and support the iterative
3, all the form elements to support automatic data capture, auto-complete function, support the development of url parameters to complete the drop-down list automatically capture
2, support for dates, numbers, period number, ID, zip code, telephone with the power of application development using HTML tags
3, internal standard html tag down to allow entry of new values should be supported, support for the specified URL from the drop-down list to obtain data to support multi-column display, support for fast positioning and support features such as rapid filtration
4, more than something to support the container label from the given reference to the specified url in the html id of the element as its content fragments - in particular to support , rather than simply innerhtml
5, page leaving the page to release all the memory resources, even if it is js and HTML objects that reference each other
6, all html tags visible support for hide and show the api, and hidden when not in the position occupied by
7, to provide detailed, based on high-level programming language (eg C) expansion of the new code html tags - that is, the core of the browser frame is a micro-kernel, all the html tags are plug-ins
8, enhance and simplify the object with the domain of interaction between the function of the window
9, img directly support binary data, not only to get src
10, to achieve powerful forms html tags, can refer to the PB in the datawindow, EXCEL, here I am not going to detail the features listed
11 static resources to support P2P streaming
I figured out why the private sector is already using HTML5 but not the government/contractor sector. The private sector oftentimes will push the envelope to take advantage of new features. The solution is to get a new browser. Section 508 rules for people with disabilities often do not apply.
However they do in government. Government requires standardization for all Web browsers so everyone can take advantage of technology, especially people with disabilities. Therefore we can't take advantage of HTML5 until it is standardized.
That is why I haven't heard of HTML5 until recently as a Federal contractor. When I was temporarily looking for work I found out this was old news to the private sector.
Christopher Marsh
INDUS Corporation
Vienna, Virginia USA
I represent the kind of person whom I suspect Tim Berners-Lee may have originally had in mind when he created the Web foundations. I'm not a web professional, but I have built many sites for myself over the years, perhaps imperfectly, but they more or less served their purpose. I have long been stymied as much by lack of fundamental layout functionality as by the severity and large number of browser incompatibilities. I saw a tweet by Adobe today which referred to the Open Web Platform: it was news to me. From my perspective, the most important desirable is the ability to flow and paginate streams of text without lots of complicated JS and CSS hacking. I would have thought many users, especially publishers, would feel the same way.