HTML5 reaches 'recommendation' standard at W3C - after 10 years in sometimes fractious development

Will HTML5 kill off Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight as the standard finally reaches 'recommendation' status?

HTML5 has finally reached "recommendation" status at the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C), the body responsible for developing the standards for HTML, the language behind the Worldwide Web. It should soon also become an International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standard as well, which will help cement its status.

However, there still remains more work to do to complete the Open Web Platform, particularly in terms of security, streaming and push notification. The Open Web Platform covers the whole gamut of web standards being developed under the umbrella of the W3C, and includes cascading style sheets (CSS) WebSockets, and Geolocation APIs.

HTML5 has been some 10 years in development. It is intended to drive web interactivity to new levels and ought to make proprietary plug-ins, such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight, obsolete.

According to W3C, the "recommendation" status was achieved following the fifth major revision to the standard.

"Today we think nothing of watching video and audio natively in the browser, and nothing of running a browser on a phone," said Tim Berners-Lee, W3C director. "We expect to be able to share photos, shop, read the news, and look up information anywhere, on any device. Though they remain invisible to most users, HTML5 and the Open Web Platform are driving these growing user expectations."

Work on the HTML5 specification began in 2004 with the the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), an independent grouping of browser developers who had grown concerned that W3C was working too slowly and that its focus on XHTML 2.0, at the time, was wrong.

Founding members of WHATWG included Apple, the Mozilla Foundation, and Opera, but today it also includes representatives of Google and Microsoft, too.

However, the development of HTML5 has been particularly fraught with disagreement, culminating in a split between W3C and WHATWG in 2012. HTML5, however, represents a snapshot of the joint work of WHATWG and the W3C HTML working group. The two groups will continue to work together to converge their respective work.

For W3C, its next goal in the development of HTML5 will be the launch of HTML5.1, which it is promising for the fourth quarter of 2016.