Clarity
Two good things have happened.
WHATWG
Firstly, as I hoped, the WHATWG have updated the name of their work to simply be HTML. This is something they tried to do a year ago, and I kicked up a stink. I was wrong. Having a version number attached to an always-evolving standard just doesn’t make sense. As Hixie put it:
…the technology is not versioned and instead we just have a living document that defines the technology as it evolves.
This change means that the whole confusing 2022 business that was misunderstood by so many people is now history:
Now that we’ve moved to a more incremental model without macro-level milestones, the 2022 date is no longer relevant.
The spec is currently labeled as a “Living Standard”. Personally, I find the “Living Standard” strapline a bit cheesy. I’d much rather the document title was simply “HTML” followed by the date of the last update.
Note that this change only applies to the WHATWG. The W3C will continue to pursue the “snapshot” model of development so the spec there definitely retains the number 5 and will follow the usual path of Working Draft, Last Call, Proposed Recommendation, and so on.
I think this difference makes it clearer what each group is doing. It was a pretty confusing situation to have two groups working on two specs, both called HTML5. Now it’s clear that the WHATWG is working more like how browsers do: constantly evolving and implementing features rather than entire specifications. Meanwhile the W3C are working on having a development milestone of those features set in stone and labelled as the fifth revision to the HTML language …and I think that is also an important and worthy goal.
W3C
The second piece of good news is that the W3C have backtracked on their “embrace and extend” attitude towards buzzwordism. When they launched the new HTML5 logo a few days ago, the W3C Communications Team initially said that HTML5 included CSS, SVG and WOFF‽ As Tantek said:
Fire the W3C Communications person that led this new messaging around HTML5 because it is one of the worst messages (if not the worst) about a technology to ever come out of W3C.
Following the unsurprising outbreak of confusion and disappointment that this falsehood caused, the W3C have now backtracked. HTML5 means HTML5. The updated FAQ makes it very clear that CSS3 is not part of HTML5.
Hallelujah!
I really wasn’t looking forward to starting every HTML5 workshop, presentation or article with the words, “Despite what the W3C says, HTML5 is not a meaningless buzzword…” Now I can safely say that the term “HTML5” refers to a technical specification, published at the W3C, called HTML5. Also, I can use that nice logo with a clear conscience.
Over time though, I’ll probably follow the WHATWG’s lead and simply talk about “what’s new in HTML.” As Remy points out, there are pedagogical advantages to untethering version numbers:
I don’t have to answer “Is HTML ready to be used?” ‘cos that’s a really daft question!