HTML5: Up and Running

A Timeline of HTML Development from 1997 to 2004

In December 1997, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) published HTML 4.0 and promptly shut down the HTML Working Group. Less than two months later, a separate W3C Working Group published XML 1.0. A mere three months after that, the W3C held a workshop called “Shaping the Future of HTML” to answer the question, “Has W3C given up on HTML?” This was the answer:

In discussions, it was agreed that further extending HTML 4.0 would be difficult, as would converting 4.0 to be an XML application. The proposed way to break free of these restrictions is to make a fresh start with the next generation of HTML based upon a suite of XML tag-sets.

The W3C rechartered the HTML Working Group to create this “suite of XML tag-sets.” The members’ first step, in December 1998, was to draft an interim specification that simply reformulated HTML in XML without adding any new elements or attributes. This specification later became known as “XHTML 1.0”. It defined a new MIME type for XHTML documents, application/xhtml+xml. However, to ease the migration of existing HTML 4 pages, it also included Appendix C, which “summarizes design guidelines for authors who wish their XHTML documents to render on existing HTML user agents.” Appendix C said you were allowed to author so-called “XHTML” pages but still serve them with the text/html MIME type.

The next target was web forms. In August 1999, the same HTML Working Group published a first draft of XHTML Extended Forms ...