HTML5: Up and Running

An Unbroken Line

I am extraordinarily fascinated with all aspects of this almost 17-year-old conversation that led to the creation of an HTML element that has been used on virtually every web page ever published. Consider this:

• HTTP still exists. It successfully evolved from 0.9 into 1.0 and later 1.1, and still it evolves.

• HTML still exists. That rudimentary data format (it didn’t even support inline images!) successfully evolved into 2.0, 3.2, and 4.0. HTML is an unbroken line. A twisted, knotted, snarled line, to be sure—there were plenty of “dead branches” in the evolutionary tree, places where standards-minded people got ahead of themselves (and ahead of authors and implementors)—but still, here we are in 2010, and web pages from 1990 still render in modern browsers. I just loaded one up in the browser of my state-of-the-art Android mobile phone, and I didn’t even get prompted to “please wait while importing legacy format...”

• HTML has always been a conversation between browser makers, authors, standards wonks, and other people who just showed up and liked to talk about angle brackets. Most of the successful versions of HTML have been “retro-specs,” catching up to the world while simultaneously trying to nudge it in the right direction. Anyone who tells you that HTML should be kept “pure” (presumably by ignoring browser makers, or ignoring authors, or both) is simply misinformed. HTML has never been pure, and all attempts to purify it have been spectacular failures, matched only ...