Will HTML 5 Restandardize the Web?

Home , Gears (software), HTML Working group, Ian Hickson

TECHNOLOGY NEWS Will HTML 5 Restandardize the Web?

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

The World Wide Web Consortium is developing HTML 5 as a standard that provides Web users and developers with enhanced functionality without using the proprietary technologies that have become popular in recent years.

n theory, the Web is a resource enhanced functionality without using “Microsoft is investing heavily in that is widely and uniformly proprietary technologies. the W3C HTML 5 effort, working with usable across platforms. As Indeed, pointed out Google our competitors and the Web commu- such, many of the Web’s researcher Ian Hickson, one of the nity at large. We want to implement key technologies and archi- W3C’s HTML 5 editors, “One of our ratified, thoroughly tested, and stable Itectural elements are open and goals is to move the Web away from standards that can help Web interop- platform-independent. proprietary technologies.” erability,” said Paul Cotton, cochair of However, some vendors have The as-yet-unapproved standard the W3C HTML Working Group and developed their own technologies takes HTML from simply describing Microsoft’s group manager for Web that provide more functionality than the basics of a text-based Web to creat- services standards and partners in Web standards—such as the ability to ing and presenting animations, audio, the company’s Interoperability Strat- build rich Internet applications. mathematical equations, typefaces, egy Team. Adobe System’s Flash, Apple’s and video, as well as providing offline At the same time though, Web QuickTime, and Microsoft’s Silverlight functionality. It also enables geoloca- companies say their proprietary tech- are examples of such proprietary tion, a rich text-editing model, and nologies are already up and running, formats. local storage in client-side databases. unlike HTML 5. In addition, Google’s Gears and The Web isn’t just about reading Adobe vice president of developer Oracle’s JavaFX—which the company the text on the page and clicking tools Dave Story said, “The HTML 5 acquired along with Sun Microsys- on the links anymore, noted Bruce timeline states that it will be at least a tems—have technologies that enable Lawson, standards evangelist at decade before the evolving efforts are creation of offline and client-side Web browser developer Opera Software. finalized, and it remains to be seen applications. Added W3C director Tim Berners- what parts will be implemented con- Although these approaches pro- Lee, “HTML 5 is still a markup lan- sistently across all browsers.” vide additional capabilities, they have guage for webpages, but the really big In fact, while HTML 5 recently also reduced the Web’s openness and shift that’s happening here—and, you became a working draft, it’s not platform independence, and tend to could argue, what’s actually driving expected to become even a W3C can- lock in users to specific technologies the fancy features—is the shift to the didate recommendation until 2012 or and vendors. Web [supporting applications].” a final W3C standard until 2022. In response, the World Wide Web “HTML 5 tries to bring HTML into Nonetheless, some browser Consortium (W3C) is developing the world of application develop- designers, Web authors, and websites— HTML 5 as a single standard that pro- ment,” explained Microsoft senior such as YouTube—are already adopt- vides Web users and developers with principal architect Vlad Vinogradsky. ing HTML 5 elements. For more

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PLAYING WITH HTML 5 master or license multiple proprietary technologies. And browsers would be able to do everal websites offer a taste of what HTML 5 will bring. Some of the applications work S with only certain browsers. more without plug-ins. YouTube’s beta HTML 5 video project (www.youtube.com/html5) works with the stan- Canvas. One of HTML 5’s key dard’s video tag. Browsers must support the video tag and have a player that uses the new features is Canvas, which lets H.264 codec. Otherwise, YouTube will use Flash to play video. developers create and incorporate Mozilla Labs’ BeSpin (https://bespin.mozillalabs.com) is an experimental program- graphics, video, and animations, usu- mer’s editor that uses a variety of HTML 5 elements. FreeCiv.net (www.freeciv.net) is an online game by the FreeCiv.net open source proj- ally via JavaScript, on webpages. ect that supports HTML 5’s Canvas element. HTML 5-compatible browsers display map HTML Canvas 2D Context is an changes faster than those that aren’t compatible. Apple-originated technology for ren- Google Wave (https://wave.google.com/wave), a cross between social networking dering 2D graphics and animations on and groupware, uses several HTML 5 elements. the client rather than on Web servers. Merge Web Design’s HTML 5 Geolocation (http://merged.ca/iphone/html5- geolocation) is, as the name indicates, a demo of HTML 5-based geolocation. By rendering graphics locally, the Sticky Notes (http://webkit.org/demos/sticky-notes/index.html) is the WebKit Open bottlenecks of server and bandwidth Source Project’s demo of HTML 5’s client-side database storage API. WebKit is an open restrictions are avoided. This makes source Web browser engine now used by, for example, Apple’s Safari browser. graphics-heavy pages render faster. Video tags. HTML 5’s codec- neutral video tags provide a way to information, see the “Playing with However, HTML was still primarily include nonproprietary video for- HTML 5” sidebar. focused on delivering text, not multi- mats, such as Ogg Theora and H.264, media or client-based applications. in a page. BACKGROUNDER Because of this, proprietary tech- The tag and underlying code HTML is the predominant markup nologies such as Apple’s QuickTime tell the browser that the associated language for webpages. It uses tags and Microsoft’s multimedia players, information is to be handled as an to create structured documents via both first released in 1991; and Adobe HTML 5-compatible video stream. semantics for text—such as head- Flash, which debuted in 1996, have They would also let users view ings, paragraphs, and lists—as well been used for video. video embedded on a webpage with- as for links and other elements. HTML Technologies such as Google out a specific video player. also lets authors embed images and Gears and Oracle’s JavaFX, both Location-based services. A loca- objects in pages and can create inter- first released in 2007, make creating tion API offers support for mobile active forms. Web-based desktop-style applications browsers and LBS applications by HTML, which stemmed from the easier for developers. enabling interaction with, for exam- mid-1980s Standardized General ple, GPS technology and data. Markup Language, first appeared as HTML 5 Working offline. AppCache lets about a dozen tags in 1991. W3C is designing HTML 5 to create online applications store data and The Internet Engineering Task a standard with a feature set that programming code locally so that Force began the first organized effort handles all the jobs that the proprie- Web-based programs can work as to standardize HTML in 1995 with tary technologies currently perform, desktop applications, even without HTML 2.0. said specification editor Michael an Internet connection. The IETF’s efforts to maintain Smith, the consortium’s special-mis- HTML 5 has several other features HTML stalled, so the W3C took over sions-subsection junior interim floor that address building Web applica- standardization. manager. tions that work offline. These include In 1996, the W3C released HTML In addition, HTML 5 will support support for a client-side SQL database 3.2, which removed the various pro- newer mobile technologies such as and for offline application and data prietary elements introduced over geolocation and location-based ser- caching. time by Microsoft and Netscape. vices (LBS), as well as newer open Web applications thus can have HTML 4.0, still not a final stan- formats such as scalable vector their code, graphics, and data stored dard, followed in 1998. The approach graphics. SVG, an open XML-based locally. provides mechanisms for style file format, produces compact and Web Workers. The Web Workers sheets, scripting, embedded objects, high-quality graphics. element runs scripts in the back- richer tables, enhanced forms, and Developers would thus be able ground that can’t be interrupted by improved accessibility for people to develop rich webpages and Web- other scripts or user interactions. with disabilities. based applications without needing to This speeds up background tasks.

14 COMPUTER

Authorized licensed use limited to: Bar Ilan University. Downloaded on May 12,2010 at 11:06:39 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply. Syntax and semantics. HTML 5 makes some changes to the syntax and the semantics of the language’s elements and attributes. For example, as Figure 1 shows, HTML can be written in two syntaxes: HTML and XML. Using XML will enable more com- plex webpages that will run faster on Web browsers. XML requires a stricter, more accurate grammar than HTML and thus necessitates less work by the local computer to run quickly and correctly. However, XML pages require more work by the developer to achieve the higher accuracy level. HTML+RDFa. The W3C recently Figure 1. HTML 5 lets HTML be written in two syntaxes: HTML and XML. XML’s stricter, began dividing HTML 5 into subsec- more accurate grammar requires more work by the developer but less work by the tions for easier development. local computer to run quickly and correctly. The browser first parses out the various terms in HTML and XML and then sends them serially in an efficient and logical manner For example, HTML+RDFa for rendering. (Resource Description Framework in attributes) provides a way to embed resource description frames in IETF process and the W3C process,” imely user acceptance may webpages. said Adobe principal scientist Larry be an issue for HTML 5. RDF is a method for conceptually Masinter, a member of the W3C’s Trevor Lohrbeer, CEO describing or modeling information HTML Working Group. of Lab Escape, a data-visu- implemented in Web resources. “[As is the case with] the IETF [pro- alization-tool vendor, said This would let developers incor- cess], there is the chaos of an open Tsweeping Internet technologies must porate machine-readable data into mailing list, wide-ranging comments, be supported by at least 80 percent webpages, which would enable faster and free participation but without of browsers before being considered page rendering. the ‘adult supervision’ that the IETF reliable enough for deployment. supplies in the form of the Internet He estimated HTML 5 won’t TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS Engineering Steering Group and area achieve this level of support until Both nailing down details and the directors,” he explained. 2013 at the earliest. standardization process itself have From the W3C, he added, there’s However, Jay Baker, director of been problematic for HTML 5. too much bureaucracy and the voting architecture at Viewlocity, a supply- For example, the open source members don’t have enough respon- chain-management software vendor, community supports making the sibility and accountability for the said his company plans to adopt open Ogg Theora format the default final results. HTML 5 fairly aggressively. video codec for HTML 5’s video tag. Another potential implementation “Although there is a learning Adobe, Google, and Microsoft concern is that some companies are curve associated with HTML 5,” he opposed this, expressing video- already extending HTML 5 in ways explained, “many of the new features quality, patent-related, and other that the final standard is unlikely to make today’s common hacks and concerns. support. workarounds obsolete.” According to Google’s Hickson, HTML 5 will blur the line between Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is a free- “There is no suitable codec that all desktop and online applications and lance technology writer based in Mills vendors are willing to implement thus create an opportunity for mal- River, North Carolina. Contact him at and ship.” ware writers, according to Dmitri [email protected]. The W3C thus decided not to select Alperovitch, vice president of threat one as a default. research with security vendor McAfee. What’s really slowing HTML 5 By letting Web applications run on Editor: Lee Garber, Computer; is that the standardization effort local systems, HTML 5 would allow [email protected] “combines the worst elements of the Web-based malware to do the same.

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