Catching Up With The News And The Blog
Posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007
It has been a busy couple of weeks! I have been finishing my first full project at work, finishing a side project for work in my spare time, polishing off a couple of sites that I had ideas about a while ago and generally ignoring this blog! The web development world keeps spinning though so I have thrown together a few important stories that have happened since my last post, just in case you missed them.
WCAG 2.0 Last Working Draft In Call For Review
The once slated WCAG 2.0 working draft came up for public review again yesterday. It has been through review once and is ready for more scrutinizing from the public. See the call for review for all the details.
The Next Version Of IE Gets A Name
It might have seemed obvious to most, but the next version of everybody’s favourite browser, Internet Explorer, will be called IE8. It took Bill Gates to break it, but it is official now, IE.Next is IE8.
The Bizarre And Oh So Far Away HTML 5
Lachlan Hunt previewed HTML5 over at A List Apart. There is a lot to HTML5, new elements, new ways of thinking, semantics, structure and I admit that, even after reading the article there is still a lot to think about. Is this the right path to take? What about XHTML? Will the expected 10 - 15 years it is likely to take to come into play going to kill it before it even makes it to a recommendation? At the moment, I don’t know what to think.
A Race?
So, December has seen steps taken for HTML5, WCAG2.0 and IE8, but which will we see in use first? HTML5 looks out of the running, IE6 is still the world’s most used browser over IE7 and WCAG 2.0 took a beating last year, has it improved enough to get a more pleasant reception now? 2008 should be an interesting year for web development.
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1December 13th, 2007 at 1:57 am
Ian Hickson Says:Regarding HTML5 — HTML5, the spec, actually defines two ways of writing the language, one for text/html, and one for XML, which we call XHTML5. So the decision of whether to use XHTML or HTML is independent of whether to use HTML5 itself or not. :-)
Also, note that the 15+ years we’re talking about is until the spec is completely done, implemented, and tested, which is a big step. Even HTML4 hasn’t reached that stage yet, and that hasn’t stopped people using HTML4! Realistically you will be able to use HTML5 long before then. Browsers already are starting to support HTML5 features like , globalStorage, etc.
I hope this helps; feel free to come take part in the work!
2December 13th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Phil Says:Ian, thank you for stopping by and clearing up a couple of things. It seems I have a lot more research to do before I put forward a full opinion on this.
I am glad to hear that there will be an XHTML5 as I do prefer the stricter nature of XML. I am also glad to hear that 15 years wasn’t the time it will take until we can actually use the new version. Though, if certain browsers that will remain nameless, continue to support standards at the current rate it could be close to that figure!
Again, thank you for clearing up a few things and I look forward to hearing more about HTML 5 in the future.
3December 13th, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Charles Says:IE8. The originality continues to flow from Microsoft!!!! They way things are, it may take 15 years for it to be “implemented”. If it provides more functionality and usefulness, you’re absolutely right. Someone will use it before then.
4December 13th, 2007 at 11:14 pm
Phil Says:Hi Charles,
I don’t really care about the name! I’m just glad to hear that Microsoft are working on the next version of IE, be it IE8, IEVII or iIE.
I agree with your second point too, even if IE doesn’t support HTML 5 for a long time, there are browsers out there that will. We already push the boundaries with CSS in order to enhance the experience for those with capable browsers, we will be able to do the same with HTML as new versions come along too.
5November 20th, 2008 at 1:34 am
Robert Says:I checked test code in IE8 beta and it works great