Word to the Wired: HTML 5.0: Overdue upgrading of web's markup language

摘要

Most computer users tend to think of their device in the same way as drivers and their vehicles: you start it up, use it and only ever open the bonnet and look underneath when there's an obvious problem to stop you in your tracks. Unless you're a webdeveloper then the inner workings of HTML - the markup language so famously devised by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN at the start of the 1990s - probably has all the appeal of your car's oil pump. Yet in this era of frequent upgrades to key operating systems and applications that we use on our computers, whether PC, laptop, netbook, mobile phone or one of the new "slate"-type devices like the Apple iPad, it's a shock to learn that HTML's specification was last updated (to version 4.01) way back in 1999. Despite the huge changes in personal computing in that intervening time, many web sites still struggle on with all kinds of complex hacks and tricks to keep improving the user's experience (or if you're cynical, to make it seem less bad than it actually is...). But at last there is increasing interest and excitement in an emerging new version, HTML 5, now being showcased by the likes of Apple and Google's marketing departments, that promises to offer important improvements across the board. So why all the fuss, and when can we all get to benefit?