First Working Draft of HTML5 Published by W3C

Via Slashdot...

Draft: http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-html5-20080122/ 
Diff from v4: http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/diff/ 
Twitter (woot!): http://twitter.com/WHATWG

So let's have a discussion on the differences... I'll add my input after I've read this stuff...

As a member of the Cult of XHTML, I'm not yet convinced of the benefits of HTML5.

I mean, why are they still clinging on to the harder-to-parse SGML? I'm fine with many of HTML5's new "practical" parts, but I don't know why they're sticking with SGML.

blowdart wrote:



• No more frames - good.

I want to see an XFrames implementation before dismissing frames. They have genuine uses, such as iframes. Are they dismissing frames as a whole, or just framesets?

blowdart wrote:

target is back - good

With no frames, what's the target="" attribute for? And before anyone says "_blank" I'm going to stab them in the face with a spork.

blowdart wrote:

Nice new forms input fields. dates, email address - good

Validation still a bítch. Since these will be sent as key/value string pairs over HTTP this only makes client-side development nicer. I wonder how they plan to format date values. ISO-8641 isn't for everyone. Maybe a format="" attribute where you stick a C-style printf format string? But knowing them, probably PHP-style.

blowdart wrote:

datagrid - now that's going to hurt page load times.

What's wrong with <table>?

W3bbo wrote:



With no frames, what's the target="" attribute for? And before anyone says "_blank" I'm going to stab them in the face with a spork.

_blank

blowdart wrote:

For iframes, and new windows without resorting to script.

_New can also be useful, if used judiciously.  The accesskey thing does bother me though; and I really wish I could put an ampersand in a button text so people could see the hotkey.

blowdart wrote:

They must have something planned; but I can't see it *shrug*

/me begins following their twitter

SlackmasterK wrote:



blowdart wrote: For iframes, and new windows without resorting to script.

_New can also be useful, if used judiciously.  The accesskey thing does bother me though; and I really wish I could put an ampersand in a button text so people could see the hotkey.

I belive it's preferable to explicitly state Access keys at the top of the document somewhere, but consider hiding them with stylesheets where appropriate.

Btw, Mootools FTW.

No change to INPUT TYPE="FILE"!???? WTF!? I hate that friggin' element. There's little-to-no styling enabled with it...please give us an alternative!

jsampsonPC wrote:

No change to INPUT TYPE="FILE"!???? WTF!? I hate that friggin' element. There's little-to-no styling enabled with it...please give us an alternative!

That's nothing to do with the specification, that's the current range of implementations.

If you want to see it stylable, contact the developers of the UAs and ask them to alter the behaviour.

W3bbo wrote:



jsampsonPC wrote: No change to INPUT TYPE="FILE"!???? WTF!? I hate that friggin' element. There's little-to-no styling enabled with it...please give us an alternative!

That's nothing to do with the specification, that's the current range of implementations.

If you want to see it stylable, contact the developers of the UAs and ask them to alter the behaviour.

Actually, I'd just like to create a textbox and button, and create a relationship between them that acts as a input-type="file". I guess I could probably do that with the DOM...hmm...

jsampsonPC wrote:

Actually, I'd just like to create a textbox and button, and create a relationship between them that acts as a input-type="file". I guess I could probably do that with the DOM...hmm...

Actually, you can't. Many DOM behaviours are removed for the file input for local security reasons.

If you want a more powerful upload facility, use Flash with input as a fallback.

....works for Flickr.

W3bbo wrote:

As a member of the Cult of XHTML, I'm not yet convinced of the benefits of HTML5.

I mean, why are they still clinging on to the harder-to-parse SGML? I'm fine with many of HTML5's new "practical" parts, but I don't know why they're sticking with SGML.

++

I am personally of the opinion that automatic repair of code is a bad idea in general - giving good error messages (including the locations of errors) and halting execution means that you arn't allowed to use ambiguous code which makes maintenance easier, as well as writing parsing scripts. (It also teaches people what the rules are, so that they learn to follow them, rather than mashing terrible pages together and expecting it to work).

If HTML broke saying that <p> doesn't match </body> in the following code:

<html><body><p>Hello World</body></html>

We wouldn't have different browsers differently rendering bad pages.

If HTML was a strongly (rather than a weakly) typed XML based language, rendering quirks could be quickly resolved as errors of implementation in the browser, rather than just a particular choice by the browser vendor.

This isn't to say that this would nessisarilly force the HTML programmer to have a worse time of it - new HTML users would be able to use WYSIWYG editors, or cleanup tools over their code, but their final code, once published could not be correctly rendered in two or more different ways in different browsers, leading to a greater level of uniformity on the internet.

W3bbo wrote:



jsampsonPC wrote: Actually, I'd just like to create a textbox and button, and create a relationship between them that acts as a input-type="file". I guess I could probably do that with the DOM...hmm...

Actually, you can't. Many DOM behaviours are removed for the file input for local security reasons.

If you want a more powerful upload facility, use Flash with input as a fallback.

....works for Flickr.

Bah. Don't have flash...

W3bbo wrote:  With no frames, what's the target="" attribute for? And before anyone says "_blank" I'm going to stab them in the face with a spork.

I hate it, when forums don't have it set for external links (like here). Especially, when they use cookies to store the posts you haven't read and they expire when you leave the site (luckily not the case here). It's annoying. New Tab FTW!