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.
Originally posted on September 13, 2008 @ 7:10 pm