On: W3C and the WHATWG sign agreement to collaborate on single version of HTML, DOM

[WorldMaker]

Also, XHTML 2 tried to push people to tags with defined semantics like ARTICLE, SECTION, MENU, etc. Most of the tags exist now in HTML5, but their semantics were neutered in the transition.

[jandrese → WorldMaker]

If properly implemented tags like that would make stuff like Firefox Reader Mode a breeze to develop, but also easy to subvert.

But it undoubtedly makes development harder. Web Developer 101: Section 1: This 20 page list of categories and their strict formal definitions.

[thaumasiotes → jandrese]

It doesn't really make development harder, because the semantic tags are defined based on properties that aren't visible to a parser. So it doesn't matter whether you use them correctly -- no validator will be able to tell.