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HTML5: A Specification or a Platform?

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An interesting discussion broke out in the comments to the blog post on Never Mind the Bullets during the weekend over my allegedly loose usage of the term HTML5 to describe the site.

682383_55089219Here’s the problem: while strictly HTML5 refers to a draft specification published by the W3C, HTML5 is increasingly being used (particularly in the media) as a generic term to describe the web platform that is built on an emerging generation of web standards. In this context, the term is used as a catch-all for a whole suite of specifications. As a fairly typical example, this InfoWorld article quotes a vast array of luminaries in an attempt to suggest that HTML5 is an emerging competitor to plug-ins like Flash or Silverlight.

Yet the HTML5 specification itself is taken up with very different concerns than many people assume – a large portion of the specification concerns itself with tightening the parsing and manipulation of HTML documents; a considerable proportion of the new additions to the specification have to do with form elements and improved semantic markup. While video and audio are included in the core specification, the specification doesn’t define many other technologies that are often considered part of the emerging web. These are instead described in external specifications (of varying levels of completion): for example, SVG 1.1, Canvas 2D API, WOFF File Format, WAI-ARIA, and so on. CSS is itself a whole family of specifications.

Complicating matters still further, some draft features that are not part of the W3C specification are included in a parallel HTML5 proposal from the WHATWG, a separate community led by a subset of browser vendors (Tim Anderson has a good primer for those who are interested).

So we have an overload of terminology: while at times it’s reasonable and appropriate to distinguish between each of these technologies, it creates problems. A purist will argue that the use of the term HTML5 to represent everything from H.264 video to SVG is wildly inaccurate, and it’s a fair point. On the other hand, we need some term to refer to this family of technologies for ease of reference, and expecting common parlance to explicitly reference a list of distinct specifications is even more unlikely than trying to get everyone to refer to GNU/Linux rather than the usually shortened form. As I mentioned earlier, it’s unlikely that Wiley are going to publish “HTML5, CSS3, SVG 1.1, Canvas 2D API, ARIA, WOFF, and Indexed DB for Dummies”!

What is the answer? While I don’t like the conflation of two different meanings, I also don’t realistically see any solution on the horizon. It’s important to be able to describe the modern web client platform succinctly, but it’s also important that we’re precise with our terminology. Maybe the core HTML5 specification should be described as “HTML5 Core”: at least that would provide for the use of the term in both a specific and a general sense.

Lastly, although I called it out in the comments, I’ll do it again here. If you’re looking for a good primer on the HTML5 specification, I recommend Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp’s Introducing HTML5 book as a very readable discussion of the new features. While it contains coverage of a few features from the WHATWG proposal that are unlikely to ever be part of the W3C HTML5 specification, it’s both pragmatic and (in my view) fair-minded.

Thoughts? How do you usually differentiate between these two uses of the term HTML5?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2010
    You can sit and debate on the semantics. The rest of us will embrace the "platform" and move on.

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2010
    is web 2.5 taken?

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2010
    Web 3.0?

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2010
    I would say go with Web 3.0 since we used Web 2.0 to define the explosion of ajax/javascript in the web, we might as well continue the trend.

  • Anonymous
    October 03, 2010
    You raise a good point about how the meaning is shifting.  In my mind, HTML5 means a web page that doesn't make use of any plugins.  While this isn't technically accurate either, I do think that it captures the spirit of what HTML5 is trying to accomplish.

  • Anonymous
    October 04, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 04, 2010
    Jeffrey Zeldman, the godfather of web standards opined on this issue at www.zeldman.com/.../html5-fuzzies where he came to the conclusion to use "HTML5 and related technologies" or "HTML5 and other new technologies". I prefer the first myself. I think we need to get past the "what we (don't) call it" because at the end of the day, only the geek-sphere cares about the semantics and customers want "hey, I saw that cool thing and I didn't have to download stuff to view it..."

  • Anonymous
    October 05, 2010
    Thanks for the very honest perspective on were 'HTML5' really is. colinizer.com Microsoft Silverlight MVP (no biased honest).

  • Anonymous
    October 11, 2010
    Thank you Tim Best Information!

  • Anonymous
    October 11, 2010
    Web 3.1 The next era of web technology!! :)

  • Anonymous
    October 11, 2010
    You have to keep the technical and the "marketing" terminology (or, specification and platform, as you call it) separated. "Dynamic HTML" and "Web 2.0" are good examples; they have no technical meaning and can be used as a catch-all by the general public. However, HTML5 is a technological term. Using that as a catch-all is going to cause confusion. Don't change the meaning of terms that already have a value.

  • Anonymous
    October 11, 2010
    HTML5++

  • Anonymous
    October 11, 2010
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    October 29, 2010
    I'm sorry, but isn't Microsoft still struggling to properly implement XHTML 1.0/CSS2? Pff. Sounds to me like you guys have another 20 years or so to worry about HTML5, moving as you are through molasses. More to the point: HTML5 is looking so bloated that I can't imagine it hitting the streets in any meaningful way anytime soon.  I think people are forgetting that (X)HTML is a $@!#ing MARK-UP LANGUAGE.  The HTML5 draft is already dramatically overstepping its boundaries as such, and not in a good way IMHO. I'm really tired of the Big Money trying to turn our web browsers into virtual Opertaing Systems.  M$ can't even implement a proper browser for the CURRENT standards, why should I ever trust them to implement even more pervasive bloat properly? (I mean c'mon, you can't even make your comment boxes properly render a scrollbar, making this the most annoying comment I've ever had to write)