IE Team Meddles in HTML5
Aug 11, 2009 Articles
Just saw a post over at Ajaxian mentioning some involvement from the IE team in the HTML5 discussions.
Personally I feel a little mixed about it. Obviously, any interest in the specifications from the IE team should indicate some level of consideration towards standards compliance, which is always a welcome sign. However, judging by some of the feedback given by Adrian Bateman I can only feel that the IE team continue to fail to understand what I feel are some of the goals of the HTML5 specifications.
New Section Tags
I take particular issue with the first feedback, regarding the proposed section tags.
It’s not clear why these new elements in particular are necessary. Those
that use HTMLElement for their interface provide no extra functionality
beyond <div class=”xxx”> or <span class=”">. If they are necessary, do
we know if this is the correct set? Are there any missing?
As I understand it, the reasoning behind the new tags is based on Semantic-HTML; HTML should be able to provide meaning to its content, and relationships between content. In HTML5, we can write up a simple website template like so:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |
How do we do this currently?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |
In the first example, it is clear what each content’s purpose in the page is. In the second, not as clear. Although I have named my divs semantically to provide some sort of structure to my markup, to others it may as well have been the following:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 |
If you put forward the argument “Well, if the divs are not given meaningful names it is the developers at fault, not the specifications” we also need to have a look at SEO as well. Spiders/Robots do not have any way of magically identifying every single possible name for your div tags. Lets not even mention names in different languages. As far as I am concerned, Spiders cannot treat your divs as separate elements with different weights; they are all the same type of element.
Semantic Markup, however, could very well be the holy grail of SEO. Spiders can treat each section differently (as an example, perhaps Nav section links could be less heavily weighted in terms of importance, as they generally link only to internal pages).
Thus, as to whether they’re really needed, I say Yes.
Conclusion
That’s not to say that the entire feedback is hogwash.
What they do get right is how vague the specifications can be at certain points, which is also understandable (HTML5 is considerably young). This puts greater impetus on editors to push for greater clarity. I do chuckle, however, at the following (coming from the browser team who’s historically been all about non-interoperability e.g. ActiveX ):
Like the <progress> and <meter> elements, we’re concerned about the maturity of the spec for achieving interoperability for a toolbar UI
Will we see any HTML5 support in IE9? At the moment, I wouldn’t put any money on it. Microsoft’s strategy has always been to stick to established standards, not fluid and volatile initiatives. All the more reason to abandon Internet Explorer completely, as it will serve only to delay and cripple HTML5 efforts.
Microsoft also has a conflict of interest in HTML5; although Silverlight has been a sort of non-event recently, it is still something that Microsoft are pushing as a new way of viewing and interacting with web applications and the web itself. HTML5 is a competitor in that regard, and while I wish to give them the benefit of the doubt, I am not confident they will not attempt to derail the initiative (given their track record) either by pressuring the group in other directions, non-support or crippled support (worst).
What do you readers think? Am I completely off the mark, completely blinded by anti-Microsoft sentiments? Do leave a comment below!
August 15th, 2009 at 4:43 pm
I think everyone else has enough clout now not to let Microsoft derail HTML5. And I don’t think Microsoft are going to drop out or suspend browser development in the near future, given its renewed push into the web world. It is only a good thing that they’re there, rather than not. Abandoning IE8 solves nothing really – like you said, these initiatives are fluid anyway; you will still likely have to do browser-dependent implementations. (IE6 on the other hand should really be put to sleep – I’m tempted to feed it the dumbed-down mobile version on my next site.)
I hope they get HTML5 sorted out properly, without the huge holes in it that ODF had allowing Microsoft to ‘drive a truck through it and break everything’. (Arguably, the only other reasonable choice they had for ODF was to not implement it for Excel.)
That said, it would be nice if we didn’t have to wait til 2022 for that – http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/HTML_5_Won_t_Be_Ready_Until_2022DOT_Yes__2022DOT
HTML already mostly follows the lead provided by Flash and it’ll only be further behind in the future with Silverlight/JavaFX and Google Gears/NC. I personally wish browsers would be more innovative and experiment more in the HTML arena – Safari was good start.