With nothing done and a first working draft due by June (three months), it is clear that they are going to have to borrow wholesale from WHAT-WG if they have any hope of achieving their goal. And the relationship between the two groups is clarified in the HTML Working Group charter:

The HTML Working Group will actively pursue convergence with WHATWG, encouraging open participation within the bounds of the W3C patent policy and available resources.

The W3C brings in an absolutely key element to the equation: Microsoft. WHAT-WG is basically a consortium of Mozilla, Opera and Apple (and Google), but Microsoft's presence, in the person of its chairman, will mean that the specifications will have an almost guaranteed chance of being implemented by all the major browser companies.

W3C has announced the formation of a Working Group of content designers and browser and application developers to put together a specification for a new version of HTML.

The organisation, which oversees the creation of Web standards such as HTML, CSS and XML, said that the establishment of the HTML Working Group recognises the importance of an open forum for the development of what is the predominant Web content technology. HTML (hypertext markup language) is a core element to describe how Web page content is presented and organised.

W3C sets new version of HTML in motion [pcpro.co.uk]

I hate to sound negative, but the browsers don't even handle the LAST version of HTML properly and you can read about people with CSS problems all over the place. Instead of cleaning things up first, let's run off and give the browser makers all something new to worry about before they fix the current messes they've already made.

What a load of nonsense.

I'm with incrediBill. How long would it be before we could actually start using anything new anyway? What we have works fine, once you know how to handle it.

What is important is the implicit acknowledgement by w3c that HTML must continue to develop. This is a huge acceptance that much of the web currently neither needs or wants the x-flavours.

By developing HTML and xHTML in parallel if/when a business decision is made to change existing sites from one to the other it might even be practicable.

but the browsers don't even handle the LAST version of HTML properly

Neither do most CMS.
Neither do most web developers.
Standards should ossify because of ignorant incompetent application that is out of their control?

Standards should ossify because of ignorant incompetent application that is out of their control?

What good are standards when they don't even work in the first place except in a generic sense?

Nobody wants to see HTML stand still. However, just supplying validation tools to check compliance on web pages is only part of the problem. IMO the W3C should take on a more proactive role in actually validating the compliance and certification of the applications that implement those W3C standards.

By all means bring on the next wave of HTML but give us ways to verify that applications have met compliance so we know where the flaws are in advance and don't spin our wheels fighting cross-platform issues.

[edited by: incrediBILL at 5:47 pm (utc) on Mar. 8, 2007]

The most needed aspects of a new html will probably be used most at first. Which will hopefully reduce the mess a bit.

It's definitely good news despite the mess. And that mess won't be going away any time soon. We'll probably have the same complaints in ten years.

But in the meantime I'd love to see a combo dropdown box built into html. And built-in client side validation where you can specify it should be a telephone number, or an email address, or a valid domain name, or a valid url or a valid country/state or decimal or integer...etc.. (While you still need server side validation, it would be nice if the browser knew to force user to type data correctly w/o kludging in a bunch of javascript).

I wonder if others feel the same as me in wanting those tools or if there are other major "pet peeves" of "missing" html...

[...] or if there are other major "pet peeves" of "missing" html...

Yes: the ability to repeat alphanumerical strings across different pages in the same way that you can repeat image files across different pages.

Seems to me that the thing to do when they have them all together is having THEM work on standardizing their "has layout" before they worry about everything else.

By all means bring on the next wave of HTML but give us ways to verify that applications have met compliance so we know where the flaws are in advance and don't spin our wheels fighting cross-platform issues.

Isn't that what XHTML transitional 'validation' has all been about? - nothing to do with serving the "correct" mime-type or whether or not pages validated XHTML1.1 strict or required XML - was it not simply a way to be "next step" ready while still getting on with the day job - e.g. lowercase tags and attributes, quoted attributes, closed elements etc.. all of these are important in other languages used in application building - why not HTML

This group will maintain and produce incremental revisions to the HTML specification, which includes the series of specifications previously published as XHTML version 1

Will HTML5 will be no more (apart from some new elements perhaps) than XHTML1 with the namespace and content-type doing the rest?

If they adopt the WhatWG working draft [whatwg.org] then it seems so

interesting times are ahead no doubt and Good to see ALL the majors involved :)

[edited by: SuzyUK at 11:08 am (utc) on Mar. 9, 2007]

I am not expecting an HTML 5.0, but more a HTML 4.03 or 4.1 instead.

Isn't that what XHTML transitional 'validation' has all been about?

That validates the PAGE, not the application displaying the page. If application developers can't validate that the applications (browser) display the pages properly to the w3c spec, then what chance does the web designer have of making cross-platform pages work properly?

Ronin, you lost me. What do you mean by that?

What a load of nonsense.

Do I sense a kinder gentler...

IMO the W3C should take on a more proactive role in actually validating the compliance and certification of the applications that implement those W3C standards.

That would be loverly.
Unfortunately:

QA Interest Group Charter (QA IG) [w3.org]

As an Interest Group, the QA IG has no mandatory deliverables besides keeping their QA IG home page up-to-date and publishing timely minutes of their meetings

Study of a W3C Certification Activity. [w3.org]
Posted and died.
I suspect behind the scenes squeals from corporate sponsors as the responsible parties.

'Mr. Ballmer in the Ballroom with a Chair'?

Ronin, you lost me. What do you mean by that?

I'm thinking that he was suggesting a way to include markup and/or text contained in a file across multiple pages without having to rely on scripting or SSI.

Hmm. How can you do that w/ images as he said?

I think my comment was unnecessarily obscure.

With images, on any page on your website you can have:

<img src="/images/mypic.jpg" style="width:100px; height:100px; border:none;" alt="My mugshot" />

Likewise with text in HTML 5, it would be useful and natural to have:

<text src="/snippets/copyright.txt" style="font-family:verdana, sans-serif; font-size:0.7em; text-align:right; margin-right:0.2em;" />

In fact, I think we should have had something like this ages ago.

That functionality is already available with the SSI and PHP "include" functions, among others.

Ronin,

I like it. And although you can do it with SSI, php, etc, it would be nice to have it in html. Not everyone using HTML understands SSI or has access to server includes, plus if you have an app that uses such a feature you may not know which platform the app is installed on. And php is more complicated than HTML.