Interview with Ian Hickson on X/HTML 5

Posted by Dion Almaer, Google Developer Programs

What is more important to the future of the web than the future of HTML, and adoption of technology in the browsers? Our own Ian Hickson has been blazing a trail under the WHATWG umbrella, as he tries to do the right thing, and standardize what is already being down, instead of making a specification in an isolated room.

Back in 2005, Ian conducted a comprehensive, detailed analysis of how markup is used on the Web which gives his real world metrics to go by.

Vlad Alexander from xhtml.com was invited to post a series of questions to the X/HTML 5 team on their public mailing list, and recently published their Q & A session.

If you haven't stayed up to date on what is happening around the standards, take a peek to see how the team answered questions such as:

• Why do we need X/HTML 5? When did this need become apparent?
• X/HTML 5 is currently in Working Draft stage. What is the tentative timetable for moving X/HTML 5 through the standards approval process towards Recommendation stage?
• X/HTML 5 introduces new markup constructs such as sectioning elements, enhancements to the input element, a construct for dialogs, a way to mark up figures, and much more. Can you briefly describe these new constructs and the reason they were added?
• X/HTML 5 has a construct for adding additional semantics to existing elements using predefined class names. Predefined class names could be the most controversial part of X/HTML 5, because the implementation overloads the class attribute. XHTML 2 provides similar functionality using the role attribute. Which approach is better and why?
• Is it due to a flaw in HTML that it is difficult to build authoring tools, such as WYSIWYG editors, that generate markup rich in semantics, embody best-practices and that can be easily used by non-technical people?
• Since much of the content on the Web is created using such authoring tools, can we ever achieve a semantically rich and accessible Web?
• The XHTML 5 spec says that "generally speaking, authors are discouraged from trying to use XML on the Web". Why write an XML spec like XHTML 5 and then discourage authors from using it? Why not just drop support for XML (XHTML 5)?

The full writeup can be read here.