The web changes fast, and for
the most part, HTML is changing right along with it.
One of the most challenging aspects of web design is staying current with
the languages and standards that you're going to be using.
So I want to take a moment to talk about the current state of HTML.
To do that, I find it's actually really helpful to take a brief look back at
the history of HTML.
And how that's lead to where we stand today, because what's current at the time
of me recording this, isn't going to be current even say three months from now.
So understanding how the language has developed is going to give you
better understanding of where it's headed.
We can trace HTML's history all the way back to 1991 when
Tim Berners-Lee published a document called HTML tags.
Which described a set of tags that could be used to mark up contents of
online documents.
Now this eventually led to the publication of the first HTML specification which was
HTML 2.0.,
in 1995, HTML 3.2 followed in 1997.
Only to be replaced by HTML 4.0 later in the same year.
So those early years, saw a lot of specifications being developed and
parallel to each other and released right around the same time.
Now the early days of HTML largely mirrored the internet itself,
which means the specification matured alongside the web.
Browser vendors would often ignore earlier specifications.
They would propose their own tags and
would even implement them in different ways.
So by the time HTML 4.0 was published, the web community had kind of
banded together under a banner of web standards, and they began to
push browser developers to sport the specifications as they were written.
And because of that,
the HTML 4 specification became the first one where support was nearly universal.
And HTML 4.0 to this day remains the most stable specification of HTML.
Now around 2000, the W3C, which is the standards body that's responsible for
publishing HTM, began the process of trying to move HTML towards
XML by publishing the XHTML 1.0 specification.
Their goal was to eventually have HTML, follow the stricter rules of XML and
have the language be more extensible.
XHTML never really realized it's vision of creating an extensible language.
They had a lot of difficulties when they went to work on
the XHTML 2.0 specification and it just sort of stagnated.
So in 2009, the W3C dropped the charter and
that essentially halted all work on moving HTML more towards XML.
Now that leads us to where we currently are today with HTML5.
While the WC3 was busy focusing on XHTML, a group of organizations and
individuals got together around 2004 to continue work on HTML.
Their goal was to take the HTML 4.0 specification and
just continue moving it forward.
This group calls themselves the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working
Group which is also referred to as sort of the awkward WHAT working group.
There's specification which was entitled web applications 1.0 was
actually eventually adopted by the W3C and renamed HTML5.
So that leads us to the current state that we find ourselves in,
which is we have two specifications of HTML being developed at the same time.
One by the W3C and one by the What Working Group.
The two groups do cooperate with one another,
but the specifications are considered independent of one another.
The W3C is developing the HTML5 specification.
Now this has clear milestones.
And once it reaches candidate recommendation,
they'll move on to the HTML 5.1 specification.
So this one's going to have a specific release date.
The WHAT Working Group,
on the other hand, is basically developing HTML as a living standard.
So in that regard, they dropped the version number,
although most people still refer to it as HTML5.
And they're just constantly updating and revising it.
Now, as you can imagine, these two specifications are beginning to
diverge from each other in fairly significant ways.
So one of your tasks as a web designer is going to be tracking both of
these specifications, and
understanding how the different browser vendors are implementing both of these and
which aspects of this specifications are making it into the browsers themselves.
Now that sounds daunting and it does take a little bit of time.
But to be honest, the HTML5 specification isn't that different from HTML 4.0.
It does introduce a few new elements and what it does more than anything else is,
it gives user agents clear rules about HTML,
how it should be parsed, how errors should be handled, things like that.
Now where the specification really diverges from 4.0 is,
its focus on building applications.
Things like drag and drop, location detection.
Support for drawling services like canvas.
Stuff like that make it more of a platform for
developing applications than a mere markup language.
Now for the most part, the W3C has split those application focus areas into their
own specifications so a lot of what you're referred to is HTML 5 is
actually a collection of individual specifications.
What does that mean for you or really anyone charged with authoring basic HTML?
Well, for the moment the bulk of sites online are either going to use HTML 4.0,
XHTML 1.0 or the increasing number of HTML 5 documents.
And to be honest there's really not a huge difference between pages that use any of
those document types.
For the most part, the biggest decision you'll be faced with is which doc type to
use and we're gong to talk about that a little bit later on.
My advice is if you're brand new to web design,
start by learning the HTML5 syntax.
Focusing mainly on learning to write clean, well structured HTML.
And then you can gradually add the newer HTML5 features as you
become more comfortable with it.