I attended two in-depth sessions on HTML5 at Oredev 2010 last week, which completely changed my perspective at it. After watching Giorgio Sardo present Microsoft’s plans for HTML5 and Robert Nyman present different HTML5 APIs, I feel that we’re moving ahead in technology but fear that we’re going back to the browser incompatibility horrors of a decade ago.
Microsoft is committed to HTML5
Giorgio Sardo, a senior technical evangelist at Microsoft, started by saying that “Microsoft is committed to HTML5, and this is not a marketing message”. On the many compatibility tests out there that measured Microsoft’s browser support for the new standards well below the competitors, he said that they want to ensure that “HTML5 needs to be done the right way”. Sardo compared that to IE6, which was “built listening to developers”, bringing many features that were not standard or “ready to be standardised”, and now causing lots of compatibility problems.
Sardo insisted that IE9 won’t have any HTML5 “specific markup that works only in IE”, and that they want to wait for specifications to be standardised before supporting them in IE9. That relates to about 150 specifications that are under development by W3C and ECMA working groups. “HTML5 is one of them, but the others are important as well – for example SVG. Some are already standardised, some are working drafts and recommendations”, said Sardo, adding that Microsoft doesn’t agree with all of the specifications. For example, they will not implement WebSQL, but prefer the IndexedDb specification.
But HTML5 isn’t just HTML5
Robert Nyman, an independent consultant, said that HTML5 is a “collection term for all the new things happening on the web“, and comes packed with different APIs. These different APIs are what Sardo referred as 150 specifications. Having the two presenters refer to HTML5 with completely different meanings, the former looking at it as just one of 150 specifications and the latter looking at it as an umbrella for all those APIs, wasn’t really encouraging.
Both presentations gave me a bit of a mixed message. Looking at the examples from a purely developer perspective, I see how these new APIs could help me build better web applications easier.
Read more: Gojko Adzic
Microsoft is committed to HTML5
Giorgio Sardo, a senior technical evangelist at Microsoft, started by saying that “Microsoft is committed to HTML5, and this is not a marketing message”. On the many compatibility tests out there that measured Microsoft’s browser support for the new standards well below the competitors, he said that they want to ensure that “HTML5 needs to be done the right way”. Sardo compared that to IE6, which was “built listening to developers”, bringing many features that were not standard or “ready to be standardised”, and now causing lots of compatibility problems.
Sardo insisted that IE9 won’t have any HTML5 “specific markup that works only in IE”, and that they want to wait for specifications to be standardised before supporting them in IE9. That relates to about 150 specifications that are under development by W3C and ECMA working groups. “HTML5 is one of them, but the others are important as well – for example SVG. Some are already standardised, some are working drafts and recommendations”, said Sardo, adding that Microsoft doesn’t agree with all of the specifications. For example, they will not implement WebSQL, but prefer the IndexedDb specification.
But HTML5 isn’t just HTML5
Robert Nyman, an independent consultant, said that HTML5 is a “collection term for all the new things happening on the web“, and comes packed with different APIs. These different APIs are what Sardo referred as 150 specifications. Having the two presenters refer to HTML5 with completely different meanings, the former looking at it as just one of 150 specifications and the latter looking at it as an umbrella for all those APIs, wasn’t really encouraging.
Both presentations gave me a bit of a mixed message. Looking at the examples from a purely developer perspective, I see how these new APIs could help me build better web applications easier.
Read more: Gojko Adzic