HTML 5 is dead?

[Lynn_Clark77]

Thanks guys for your very informative post. I am new to website building and I have been reading a lot to make sure I won't mess up. I have been skeptical in using HTML 5 because I have read a lot of bad comments. I can say that your ideas gave me a different perspective. I will follow this for updates. I hope to learn more from you.

[MikeGale]

This long saga has taken another twist.

The WHATWG and W3C versions of HTML5 are now kinda officially divorced.

http://j.mp/MBN9wA

http://j.mp/NqG1GS

For those making pages that work across significant browsers, that reinforces decisions to ignore the official standards.

[Albert Wiersch]

Thanks for posting that. Very interesting.

The idea of "HTML5" being a living standard makes sense to me, as that's basically what HTML has been in the real-world. However, having two divergent sets of "standards" seems a little 'weird' and potentially problematic.

I've been mostly using the W3C specification, but may now switch to using the WHATWG spec.

[MikeGale]

I think that this increases focus on the reality. The reality is what browsers actually implement. Admittedly that's different for each web site. (Some are mostly FF / Chrome, some are only IE...) If your target audience includes a slower release cycle browser or two (my data certainly shows a lot of these in many sites), then it's easier. You probably design against the last release of the slowest changing browser that matters (to you).

I imagine that's what a lot of web content creators are doing.

If you are chasing the fast moving goal posts it gets harder.

• You need to know that a browser has changed (Chrome is harder!!)
• At worst, for each change you need to figure out if that changes your personal game

Rigorously doing that looks too hard to me. Especially in a game where I find that the available facilities still fall short of what I wanted to do ten years ago! (Keeping up is not helped by the fact that news items on the web are often produced by those I don't want to hear, ever! They swamp the useful content so much that it may be unfindable.)

Unfortunately I've noted a fair number of fast moving goalpost chasers recently. Some of them do things I'd like to use. I'm certain that the job could be done across all browsers, but they're not doing that. I imagine that's because they're locked into technologies that have major incapabilities. The fragmentation evident in the steaming jungle of native smartphone applications is spreading into browserland, getting worse I suspect.

I haven't checked out the implications of Windows 8, but I think that the old idea of one way to design web content is teetering on the edge of a precipice. The world that's shaping up seems both more interesting and too time wasting.

At the end of the day this process has, in a way, taken us back to the situation that made us want standards in the first place.

[Albert Wiersch]

Well said Mike!

Oh, and I still prefer good content to the latest frazzle-dazzle. On commercial sites (like financial banks & credit cards & PayPal), I prefer them to be functional and fast. I don't need whiz-bang... just FAST & FUNCTIONAL. Oh, and reliability is a big plus too (reliable that it's available and that it works without issues on the different devices & browsers I want to access it with). Amazon.com seems to do things very well... PayPal has always amazed me with its slowness... but perhaps I am drifting off-topic.

[alman]

HTML5 is came just now you say that she died. There is no such thing I beleive