W3C hibernated for years:
- HTML was last updated in 1999;
- XHTML was last updated in 2002.
WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group)was started by Google, Mozilla, Apple and Opera since in 2004 to develop the next generation of Web markups’ standards. Then they submitted an HTML 5 draft proposal, intending to replace the current HTML and XHTML.
According to a recent voting result of W3C, the future Web Standards will be HTML 5, not XHTML 2. This vote is based on the application of developing HTML5 as Web Standards.
So W3C decided to
- accept the HTML5 proposal from WHATWG
- release the next version of HTML as HTML5.
Unlike usual W3C working groups before, this group consists of members on behalf of key companies which will lead new Web Standards into practice:
Instead of bringing a revolution to HTML like XHTML 2, WHATWG expects a evolution. Some results from the WHATWG spec has been implemented in some browsers, like <canvas>.
In the HTML 5 differences from HTML 4 draft, improvements of HTML 5 can be seen, like changes of grammars, and removed elements and attributes.
Grammars
HTML 5 can be declared via HTML grammar:
<!doctype html><html> <head> <meta charset="UTF-8"> <title>Sample document</title> </head> <body> <p>Sample paragraph</p> </body></html>as well as XML grammar:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Sample document</title> </head> <body> <p>Sample paragraph</p> </body></html>Language features
Elements like div, li, etc., become more strict. For example, these elements should not includes block level elements and inline elements. These code are valid:
<div> <em>...</em> ...</div><div> <p><em>...</em></p> <p>...</p></div>But the following code is invalid:
<div> <em>...</em> <p>...</p></div>This is helpful to identify the level the elements.
Removed elements
- Pure presentation:
, <big, , , ,, , ; - Negative for usability: , , noframes>;
- Obscure: ,