HTML: Where it's Going
Mar. 11th, 2008 11:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurBeen meaning to post this for a while. Those who are involved in Web design (a lot of my friends) may be curious to see where the HTML language is going. They *are* evolving it, slowly but surely -- one of these years, HTML 5 is going to come out, and it's fairly different. For those who want to see how, check out this summary of HTML 5 differences from HTML 4.
It's just a draft, mind, and the details will undoubtedly continue to change, but you can see the broad strokes of where they are going with this. The separation of structure from presentation continues, with most of the presentation details formally removed from the language in favor of using CSS instead. In exchange, a whole lot of new structural semantics get added -- some of which I'm a bit skeptical about, like "article" and "dialog" -- as well as a lot of APIs for adding fancier functions like audio and video in a vaguely consistent way.
None of it's earth-shattering, but it's at least trying to be a purer language, with the focus strictly on the content rather than the look-and-feel. Of course, they are also requiring browser makers to keep supporting all the old crap for the time being, so I don't actually expect to see this purity come into practice any too quickly, but I can appreciate the aesthetics of what they're doing here...
It's just a draft, mind, and the details will undoubtedly continue to change, but you can see the broad strokes of where they are going with this. The separation of structure from presentation continues, with most of the presentation details formally removed from the language in favor of using CSS instead. In exchange, a whole lot of new structural semantics get added -- some of which I'm a bit skeptical about, like "article" and "dialog" -- as well as a lot of APIs for adding fancier functions like audio and video in a vaguely consistent way.
None of it's earth-shattering, but it's at least trying to be a purer language, with the focus strictly on the content rather than the look-and-feel. Of course, they are also requiring browser makers to keep supporting all the old crap for the time being, so I don't actually expect to see this purity come into practice any too quickly, but I can appreciate the aesthetics of what they're doing here...