Critical.
Authoritative.
Strategic.
Subscribe to CIO Magazine »

W3C: HTML5 will be finished in 2014

The W3C sets a timeline for finishing the hotly debated HTML5 standard

Those curious about the final release date for the hotly debated HTML5 need wonder no more: The W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) plans to finalize the standard by July 2014, the organization announced Monday.

"This is the first time we've been able to answer people's questions of when it will be done," said Ian Jacobs, head of W3C marketing and communications. "More and more people from more and more industries are asking when it will be done. They require stability in the standard and very high levels of interoperability."

HTML5 is the next version of the HyperText Markup Language, a platform-neutral standard used worldwide for rendering Web pages. Concerns over when the standard would be finalized have escalated in recent years, as Apple, Google and Microsoft touted the still-unfinished standard as the basis for building Web applications.

Despite the enthusiasm of those companies and others, many have cautioned against using the standard before it is finalized. Because of its complexity, estimates as to when HTML5 would be finished have varied wildly, from a year or two to not until 2022.

The last call for feedback has already been announced, for May 22 this year.

From then until 2014, the HTML Working Group will have several tasks to complete before the standard is finalized, Jacobs said. The group has to review and address the comments submitted up to the May deadline. The feedback from this "Last Call" is expected to be quite considerable and could result in another revision of the document.

The group also has to design a test suite, one that can encompass the wide range of different browsers and platforms that will render pages and Web applications written in HTML5.

Such interoperability is crucial, given the expanding range of devices accessing the Web, including televisions, tablets and phones. "The target is broad interoperability," Jacobs said.

The W3C expects no new features to be added after the Last Call. From that point on the group will take feedback only from implementers and through trials of the test suite, said Philippe Le Hégaret, lead for the W3C Interaction Domain, which oversees the development of HTML, CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and other Web standards.

As the working group finalizes HTML5 it will start considering new features and improvements for subsequent versions. While members of the working group have decreed they will do away with version numbering of the standard, neither Jacobs nor Le Hégaret would definitively state that there won't be future numbered versions, such as an HTML6 or HTML5.1.

For now, the organization will classify the work being done under the working title of "HTML.next," Jacobs said.

The W3C also announced on Monday that it has extended the charter of the HTML Working Group to 2014. The HTML Working Group is comprised of more than 400 members from browser vendors, software developers and other organizations reliant on the Web standard.

Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com

Join the CIO Australia group on LinkedIn. The group is open to CIOs, IT Directors, COOs, CTOs and senior IT managers.

More about: Apple, Google, IDG, Microsoft, W3C, World Wide Web Consortium
References show all

Comments

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
Users posting comments agree to the CIO comments policy.
Login or register to link comments to your user profile, or you may also post a comment without being logged in.
Related Coverage
Related Whitepapers
Latest Stories
Community Comments
Tags: application development, internet, Internet-based applications and services, Languages and standards, software, W3C
Latest Blog Posts
Whitepapers
  • Improving Productivity in the Connected Enterprise Through Collaboration
    In the market for collaborative applications, a large convergence is beginning to take hold, and the consumerization of IT is central to this movement. The technologies that people use as consumers are impacting the way employees, customers, and partners want to interact and collaborate at work. People want to take the same technology experiences that are available at home and plug them into their daily work lives. This movement is setting worker expectations as both employees and corporate consumers. Workers need to have the choice and flexibility to consume the applications they want, where they want, and on their preferred device. Read on.
    Learn more »
  • 10 Ways to Stretch your storage budgets in virtualised, consolidated environments
    Everyone’s heard the line about the only inevitabilities in life being death and taxes. IT managers, however, would quickly assert a third absolute – higher storage needs. There’s no question data storage requirements continue to skyrocket, and there’s absolutely zero likelihood of that ending any time in our lifetime. Enterprises have successfully controlled their IT budgets and server sprawl issues with the help of virtualisation technologies, but what’s next? Increasingly, organizations are turning to storage consolidation for virtualised server environments in order to reduce data center costs and inefficiencies.
    Learn more »
  • Investment Protection and Elasticity for your Network
    Enterprise IT teams are being challenged to increase overall IT flexibility and business agility by incorporating emerging cloud technologies into their next generation datacentre architectures. Top of mind is how to embed a high degree of elasticity to properly handle increasingly unpredictable application traffic loads, while still meeting strict performance service level agreements (SLAs). Satisfying these often opposing goals requires that individual elements within the larger datacentre infrastructure provide a native capability to increase capacity and performance as conditions dictate. Read on.
    Learn more »
All whitepapers
rhs_login_lockGet exclusive access to Invitation only events CIO, reports & analysis.
Recent comments