Which technology?

In order to discuss the technologies that we are learning to use in this subject, I will be writing a series of blogs providing the background of each technology, how they were developed and where they are at today.

This post outlines the background of HTML and provides an overview the new elements that will be introduced in HTML 5. As a newcomer to web programming languages such as HTML, I do not have any concrete experience on the newest version of HTML, and cannot pass comment on the updates. However since it is going to become the new W3C standard I hope to utilise HTML 5 in my project, and by the end of the semester be able to pass judgment.

A brief history of HTML

HTML has been around for more than 10 years and has become the standard mark up language for building the structure of websites.

Brief history of web development standards:

• HTML 3.2 first published by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) in January 1997

• HTML 4 first published by the W3C in December 1997

• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) first published by the W3C in December 1996

• XHTML 1.0 first published by the W3C in January 2000

• HTML 5 (working draft) published by the W3C in April 2009

Developers were encouraged to “...support the official HTML specifications as closely as possible, so that a web page written to standards would behave the same way across browsers”. (Castro 2007:17).

Originally HTML was used to define structure of the website as well as the page layout of a website. However, the introduction of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) “brought new capabilities, in particular the ability to position elements on a web page with great precision” (Castro 2007:18). CSS is the “standard for defining the visual presentation for web pages (Grannell 2007:10). The combination of HTML and CSS gave more power and flexibility to web designers who were trying to improve the usability of bigger websites and shift away from the text based layout provided in original versions of HTML.

XHTML was published by the W3C in 2000 and was “a great improvement over HTML”. (Castro 2007:21). The development of XHTML “largely came about because of the inconsistent way that browsers displayed HTML (Grannell 2007:8). The syntax was a lot stricter, meaning you have to worry more about punctuation and closing tags. These changes were mainly due to the language being written in XML which requires that all elements have closed tags. The rigidity of XHTML provided a “stronger, more flexible, more powerful” platform (Castro 2007:21). Having said that, Grannell (2007) notes that XHTML has hard and fast rules which make it easier to learn.

Updating the standards

Work on HTML 5 began in 2004 by the WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group). It is interesting to note that the group was formed by members from Apple, Mozilla and Opera. Microsoft was invited, but declined. The W3C has formed a working group to further develop and publish HTML 5, which will replace HTML 4 and XHTML. A working draft was published in December 2008, and some organisations such as Google, Apple and Mozilla are starting to use HTML 5. I wonder when Microsoft will join the bandwagon.... it will certainly make life easier for the developers.

References:

Castro, E. 2007, HTML, XHTML & CSS, 6^th edn, Peachpit Press, Berkeley CA

Harold, E. 2007, New Elements in HTML 5, IBM Technical Library, viewed 23 August 2009, http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-html5/?ca=dgr-lnxw01NewHTML

Grannell, C. 2007, The Essential Guide to CSS and HTML Web Design, Appress, New York NY

Shankland, S. 2009, Microsoft joins HTML 5 fray in earnest, CNET, viewed 23 August 2009, http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10305822-92.html

HTML, Wikipedia, viewed 23 August 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML

W3C, viewed 23 August 2009, http://www.w3.org