And you thought you were behind on HTML5. Microsoft just gave a presentation at the W3C and discussed at least on major proposed feature for HTML6, which could see a specification as early as June of next year.
It almost sounds like science fiction given the fact that only 1% of websites implement HTML5 features today, a tenth of a percent uses advanced HTML5 functionality and there is no browser that supports the entire feature set of HTML5. The last thing you would think about right now is probably HTML6, but that is exactly what Microsoft and Adobe discussed at the recent Technical Plenary Day (TPD), an annual meeting of the working groups of the W3C.
It wasn’t the only topic on the agenda of the TPD, but the HTML.next panel surely shed some light on the beginnings of the work on what could become HTML6. Microsoft’s Patrick Dengler presented HTML6: HTML+SVG+CSS, which provides some ideas on the future integration of these three standards. “The integration of SVG into HTML paired with CSS seems to be well defined, but would definitely benefit from more conformance tests. The Working Groups will collaborate to build tests for cross SVG, CSS, and HTML scenarios into the HTML testing infrastructure,” Dengler wrote. “Additionally, some browsers are investigating how to simplify the SVG DOM to make it more closely resemble the HTML DOM experience that is expected by Web developers.”
In his paper, Dengler also proposes future development and standardization efforts that suggests deeper testing of features and a participation of all browser manufacturers across W3C working groups. He pushes for date-driven feature sets that “need to be agreed upon up front across Working Groups.” There is an inherent theme of new new features and innovation that somehow collides with the idea of backwards compatibility. “Always be mindful of backward compatibility, but not lead with the statement that it is an absolute,” Dengler wrote. “This should be paired with a single design model that eliminates incompatibilities in the future.” He proposed to “not sacrifice well established Web development processes for backward compatibility if there is a belief that the tolerance for adopting a different practice by developers is very low.”
Adobe’s Larry Masinter talked about new and much more complex publishing and content consumption technologies for the Web. While there were no specific architectural ideas, he explained that the development of HTML6 will offer lots of choices and all possible solutions in regards to topics such as standards, modularity, extensibility, evolution, DRM, privacy, voice integration and even the future of JavaScript need to be evaluated.
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