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Breaking news: HTML5 will be ready by the year 2022

html tag italicized

When will the next version of HTML be ready? Apparently, we have 4859 days to go before HTML5 reaches the “Proposed Recommendation” status. That’s 13 years, according to Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML5 specification.

It’s been 10 years since HTML4 came out. And it will take a total of 19 years for HTML5 to come to fruition. Here’s staggering journey HTML5 has gone and will go through:

  • First W3C Working Draft in October 2007.
  • Last Call Working Draft in October 2009.
  • Call for contributions for the test suite in 2011.
  • Candidate Recommendation in 2012.
  • First draft of test suite in 2012.
  • Second draft of test suite in 2015.
  • Final version of test suite in 2019.
  • Reissued Last Call Working Draft in 2020.
  • Proposed Recommendation in 2022.

So what do we do about this excruciating piece of information? Jeff Croft says we should just go back to work. And ignore HTML5 until we absolute don’t have to.

If and when HTML 5 becomes something that can help me serve my clients and the users of their websites, then I will absolutely learn all there is to know about it and incorporate it into my arsenal. Until then, I don’t see the point.

It’s only a bit disappointing since the knowledge of the beautiful things one can achieve with HTML5 has been coming and going for the past few years now. But the thing is, as Kroc Camen said, “HTML5 is doable in the here and now”—his site is excellent proof of that. Except, of course, it will take extra work for it to work properly as not even the standards-compliant browsers support it. Which brings us back to Jeff Croft’s point.

Related reading:

Published by Sophia Lucero on September 13, 2008 in Web Programming and tagged , , , • Did you like it? Subscribe! Or Submit it to Blogosphere News!

10 people says things!

  1. Hmm. It seems that an ad-hoc HTML 4.1 could be hacked in a couple months, with what HTML 5 looks like now. Get buy-in from Mozilla and Opera, run it by Microsoft, and proceed. Validate to 4.01 Transitional. Surely someone can validate to an interim agreement (4.1) in a week or three.

    Otherwise we run the risk of MS running off with proprietary interpretations, Mozilla running off to best understanding of HTML5, and Opera and others floating between 4.01 and 5 - and web sites posting ‘Best viewed with my brother-in-law’s browser running on Windows 3.1 with 1.5 gb ram and 40 meg free on the second hard drive. On Mondays.’

    By Brad K. on September 13, 2008 8:56 pm

  2. *Sigh* HTML5 will be ready by 2012, it will not be entirely complete including test suites until 2022. Jeff Croft also points out that implementation of HTML5 can start prior to 2012, in fact this is already happening.

    By Ryan on September 13, 2008 9:25 pm

  3. If it ain’t broke, why fix it?

    HTML is the reason why I’m writing this comment on your blog..

    Your design uses HTML to put classes and elements from CSS documents..

    What possibly could they do next?

    By Brad Blogging.com - Personal Blog Tips And Blog Help on September 13, 2008 10:26 pm

  4. Actually it could be ready for browser vendors to seriously start using by 2009 -> “Last Call Working Draft in October 2009″

    By Ryan on September 13, 2008 11:58 pm

  5. @Brad:

    It is exactly the other way around. HTML 4 was underdefined and left the field open for proprietary and inconsistent implementations. That is one of the things that HTML 5 will correct. And also on of the reasons why it will take a while until:

    - There exists two browsers that nails every little detail and nuance of the spec.
    - There exists a test suite that covers every little detail and nuance.

    These are the requirements for a “Recommendation”.

    That is: It will take until perhaps 2022 until HTML 5 is in such a state that we can say all work ON the standard is complete. But you can begin working WITH stuff from the standard today and what we are seeing Mozilla, Opera and the Webkit guys doing is implementing stuff WHILE talking to each other, in order to make it non-proprietary.

    Look at Mozilla’s and Webkit’s Bugzilla, the mailing lists, WHATWG IRC, etc. We are not seing fragmentation coming from todays rendering engine developers!

    By Lars Gunther on September 14, 2008 1:49 am

  6. [...] Vía Wisdump [...]

    By Webmaster Libre | Las cosas de palacio van despacio, HTML 5 para 2022 on September 18, 2008 11:29 pm

  7. this is bullshit…what these guys are doing then..i think i will require html 10, 12, 15 by the time..it should not take that long..wasting time…i cant simply believe this..I will have my own language ready to develope a website by then..absolutely…this is a joke already…i will not be able sleep tonight

    By suraj on October 23, 2008 3:03 am

  8. thisis really a breking news… broke everything…..

    By suraj on October 23, 2008 3:06 am

  9. [...] And what about next-generation HTML5, which will have new structural tags like <header>, <section>, <article>, <footer>? Can one not feel guilty using all those <div>s in the midst of these elegant new tags? Perhaps that’s another debate for another day—in 2022. [...]

    By Really? Everything I Know About CSS Is Wrong? | Wisdump on October 29, 2008 10:07 pm

  10. well at least this breaks the html 5 vs xhtml 2 war. i had trouble choosing over which version i was going to work over (i like to be formal). at least my mind can be left in peace, and write html pages in xhtml 2.0. =)

    By Eduardo Garcia on October 30, 2008 2:19 pm

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