HTML5: Can the center hold?

The W3C is steadily moving toward a final specification of HTML5, and with its emphasis on multimedia and interactive content, the new standard is already being hailed as a potential Flash and Silverlight killer. Unfortunately, however, universal agreement on the new standard still seems far off. Earlier this month, Microsoft stepped up its activity in the HTML5 standardization process, submitting a new list of concerns regarding various proposed features across the specification.

For Microsoft to start nitpicking now may seem ironic, since Internet Explorer has long been considered the worst offender when it comes to poor Web standards compliance. IE6 is a particular thorn in Web developers’ sides; although its standards support is woefully inadequate, it still commands as much as 27 percent of the overall browser market. Some developers have gone so far as to mount a “kill IE6” campaign in hopes of eliminating the offender. Nonetheless, Microsoft insists it is committed to supporting IE6 through 2014, when Windows XP becomes officially obsolete.

[ InfoWorld’s Paul Krill asks: Could HTML5 kill Flash and Silverlight? | Keep up with app dev issues and trends with InfoWorld’s Fatal Exception and Strategic Developer ]

So if Web developers are stuck with the prospect of at least five more years of Web-standards Babel, what is all this work on HTML5 is really worth? Can we really expect a universally accepted standard for rich Web content anytime soon, or is the ideal of a truly standards-based Web just a pipe dream?

The long and winding road to Web standards For the last few years, HTML 4 and XHTML 1.1 have represented the state of the art in Web markup, but the future of the standards has long been contentious. The groundwork of HTML5 was actually laid outside the W3C by a consortium called the Web Hypertext Applications Technology Working Group (WHATWG), whose members were dissatisfied with the W3C’s proposed direction of XHTML 2. WHATWG eventually got its way: In July 2009, W3C officially announced it was abandoning the XHTML 2 effort in favor of HTML5.

Almost simultaneously, W3C also gave up on specifying codec support for the new standard’s

And markup isn’t the only technology that has confounded those in favor of a standards-based Web. Earlier, the EcmaScript working committee — the standards body behind the JavaScript language — abandoned work on the proposed EcmaScript 4 standard, in favor of the much less ambitious version 3.1. In that case, too, objections from Microsoft contributed to the breakdown of talks.

Microsoft’s issues with the HTML draft So is Microsoft just working to undermine the vision of an open, standards-based Web for its own gain? It wouldn’t be the first time, but Microsoft isn’t alone in its current complaints. Regarding the EcmaScript fiasco, Yahoo’s Douglas Crockford also came out in favor of scrapping version 4, arguing “the only thing we have to fear is premature standardization” — a sentiment that seems to echo Microsoft’s own concerns.

While some items on Microsoft’s list seem like quibbles, others are valid issues. For example, Microsoft argues that proposed new tags such as

For example, recently a lot of energy has been spent on developing formal XML standards for office documents, but despite all the hard work and media coverage, the effort has met with only limited success. Microsoft released plug-ins that provided OpenDocument format (ODF) support for Office, but the files they output are pathetically incompatible with other software that supports ODF. Call that an anticompetitive move on Microsoft’s part if you want, but the open source community isn’t doing much better. OpenOffice.org claims to support Microsoft’s competing OOXML standard, but its track record is almost as bad as Microsoft’s. So much for the universality of XML.

The result? Microsoft Office’s legacy binary formats remain the de facto formats for office documents worldwide. Microsoft wins, and open, standards-based XML loses. But who is really to blame? Is it Microsoft’s fault — or is a universal, XML-based office document standard that’s supported consistently across every application suite simply an unrealistic goal?

Similarly, when it was first conceived, XHTML sounded like a great idea, but it quickly became the Esperanto of the Web: While its goals and ideals were laudable, its strict standards were simply too burdensome for non-engineers who were used to communicating in a less formal way. So where does that leave HTML5? If it specifies too much, it will suffer the same slow adoption rate as XHTML; not enough, and browser vendors will inevitably implement its specifications in inconsistent ways.

Get used to it. Improved standards compliance has been a boon to Web developers everywhere, but if we’re honest, standards will only get us so far. I don’t know how long it will be before the final HTML5 spec arrives, but if you’re hoping it will usher in a standards-compliant utopia, I suspect you’ll have to wait a lot longer. Maybe forever.