
HTML5 is done, but two groups still wrestle over Web's future - bkardell
http://www.cnet.com/news/html5-is-done-but-two-groups-still-wrestle-over-webs-future/
======
fidotron
I've been doing mobile professionally for well over a decade, and every three
months or so something happens in that world which annoys me into thinking
that the web is the future again. The times when I've ever actually done
anything to look into it - well, mobile's a mess, but the web is a whole other
level of horrific.

Guess what I spent this afternoon doing.

This is why backend server devs seem to actually make it to middle age,
whereas front end types go to burning man one time and never come back.

~~~
CmonDev
Life is not worth spending on trying to position DIVs properly or locating a
JS typo.

------
matthewmacleod
I'm not quite sure why there's such a negative opinion of the front-end web
stack around these parts.

Yeah, HTML/CSS/JS have lots of warts and hangovers from their respective
document-oriented origins. But recent developments have been great, and there
are myriad tools to make working with these technologies pretty enjoyable
(SASS in particular changes the whole business of styling.)

I think that ultimately, building cross-platform, cross-device apps is always
going to involve a fair bit of work. The web's still the best tool for doing
that, and it's getting better.

~~~
sjogress
The web stack is not just about the web anymore. I'm seeing it being used in
all sorts of customer-facing products.

For instance TV set-top boxes very often use the web stack for their GUIs.
Though, to be honest, they often use SVG for markup instead of HTML.

------
guelo
W3C has been proven useless or harmful time and time again. If it hadn't been
for WHATWG they'd be at ICANN level of awfulness by now.

------
chadzawistowski
I'm confused why WHATWG is concerned about W3C plagiarizing their work on an
HTML5 spec, when the alternative is competing specs which drift further apart.
Surely interoperability is key here?

~~~
wanderr
I'm very much a distant observer here so I might not even know what I'm
talking about, but my understanding is that a large part of the problem is
that W3C declares a spec as final and stops updating it, while WHATWG is still
working on it. So we do end up with competing specs that drift further apart
over time. It would be preferable for W3C to just link to the WHATWG docs
which are actually maintained.

~~~
domenicd
Exactly. Unfortunately they can't even bring themselves to do this.

See e.g.
[http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/references.html#refsURL](http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/references.html#refsURL)
wherein they add in a non-normative note a link to the WHATWG URL spec, but in
the normative reference text instead link to an old, outdated working draft
from 2012 which specifies an incorrect algorithm and APIs that do not exist in
any browser like getParameterNames() and so on.

It's very tragic, and not at all good for the health of the web.

------
dreamweapon
Oh -- I thought the "done" in the title meant "done with, finished, over." But
alas, it was wishful thinking.

~~~
innguest
Same here, I was so hopeful.

~~~
CmonDev
You have to wait until ~2050 for that.

------
_random_
_"...anything that slows the improvement of the Web means programmers are more
likely to devote their energies to writing apps for smartphones and tablets
running on Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating systems instead of
HTML5..."_

And rightly so. Being locked into a store worries me much, much less than
being locked into using JS and HTML.

~~~
Igglyboo
Wow, I can't believe he said that.

~~~
wavefunction
I don't understand the OP's view at all, I have to admit.

JS and HTML are about the only things offering freedom on the internet these
days.

~~~
rimantas
Well, when I want internet I launch browser. When I need something else, I
launch an app. More likely than not it gets data from some web server via HTTP
and in JSON. It may even use bits of HTML for some views. Who cares. I don't
get this obsession to defeat native on mobiles. Like don't get at all. Some
dark thoughts start to creep in: maybe that's just some lazy webdevs who see
mobile as new hotness but cannot be bored to learn native try to pull the only
thing they know into that space? If embeded programming will be the new
hotness, will we see the same? Why complain about developers developing for
Android and iOS, but not metion those developing for Windows or OS X? And
throwing half-baked (at best) features so just some capabilities can be
checked on the HTML-on-mobile laundry list won't make them more fun to work
with. How's that offline web apps thing going?

~~~
TheZenPsycho
>How's that offline web apps thing going?

it was going just fine until apple disabled it in iOS7

but despite that setback, google continues to bank its entire business on
offline web apps.

------
jokoon
I don't care about this the slightest. I would gladly see something that
replace the http/html/css/js combination with something more dynamic that
involves less text parsing...

compiled html with something that resembles protocol buffer would make webapps
much smoother.

I guess I'm a low level nerd.

~~~
shirro
We had compiled web apps. First there were Java applets which were a buggy,
insecure, ugly PoS. Then we had ActiveX which was even worse. By comparison
html/js/css have produced fairly good results. Parsing text is not a
bottleneck for todays machines as any low level nerd would know.

~~~
ksk
>By comparison html/js/css have produced fairly good results.

Um, based on what? My browser routinely takes up gigabytes of memory just to
show me 'one PDF' worth of content. Analytics scripts steal my CPU time/power
that I pay for. HTML/CSS's shitty ambiguous spec without a reference
implementation means that no two browsers will ever work alike. And if you're
on mobile, all that means you're battery life is screwed. And um.. security?

[http://secunia.com/vulnerability-
review/browser_security.htm...](http://secunia.com/vulnerability-
review/browser_security.html)

~~~
nmjohn
So you are arguing java and activeX are better than web apps? Because that is
the comparison you are responding too.

The 1/100 of a penny worth of electricity that analytic scripts cost you a
year is worse than the security nightmare of java applets and activeX? Come
on.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
The fact that Java, ActiveX, Flash, and JavaScript became goto (sic)
technologies only underlines how much the web has always been the poster child
for 'worse is better.'

The irony is that the web stack has become so complex you may as well build
apps using one of the many mainstream compiled languages for app logic, and
work with an improved DSL for styling and markup. (Which is more or less what
Go+SASS/etc are becoming anyway.)

The inevitable next stage will happen when the W3C discovers functional
programming - I'm guessing around 2020 - and we'll have Greenspun our way to
the 10th law again.

~~~
nmjohn
If you want it to change, develop something to change it.

I'm not aware of a single technology with a goal to fundamentally upset any of
the things you listed.

Personally, I'm satisfied with javascript development. Is it perfect? No. Are
there lots of things that could be done better? Absolutely.

But it frustrates me how many people complain about how much it sucks when
there are no projects (with any support) attempting to really change things.
If my opinion of javascript is wrong and it really is that bad - I'd think
there would be more of a movement to move away from it.

~~~
edwinjm
There actually is a project that wants to replace the html/css/javascript
browsers: Adobe Air.

[http://www.adobe.com/nl/products/air.html](http://www.adobe.com/nl/products/air.html)

For some reasons it's not really taking off.

~~~
jokoon
it might not be open source or subject to standardization

