http://www.infoworld.com/article/3198460/web-development/html5-where-the-core-web-technology-is-headed-now.html?idg_eid=593b93817ad0a9726f889c7044a6e9d3&email_SHA1_lc=e7374cde0e4a2aa6c9f1b1e003c6596bded02f0c&cid=ifw_nlt_infoworld_daily_2017-05-26&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=InfoWorld%20Daily:%20Afternoon%20Edition%202017-05-26&utm_term=infoworld_daily
HTML5: Where the core web technology is headed now
The staple of the open web platform, the HTML5 standard is undergoing both
incremental and fundamental change
Paul Krill
Editor at Large, InfoWorld
May 26, 2017
HTML5 began making waves in software development many years before its official
adoption in October 2014, reducing reliance on proprietary rich internet
technologies such as Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight. The HTML5 video
element, for embedding video in a document, was a big change to support the
rich internet. HTML5 also was designed to the support the change of the web
from a place to browse documents to a place to build distributed applications.
Still dogging HTML5, though, is the search for a common, royalty-free video
codec for the web. There has been some progress, but no resolution. H.265 is
still encumbered with patents. Google’s VP9 codec may help, but other companies
involved in web standards are leery of supporting technology from a major
competitor.
Nonetheless, HTML5 has established itself as the way to build applications for
an open, multimedia-rich web. “HTML5 has very quickly become the only version
of HTML that people are really using in browsers today and websites,” said Jeff
Jaffe, CEO of the World Wide Web Consortium, which has jurisdiction over the
technology.
HTML5’s incremental improvements
The HTML5 specification is regularly updated. Sometimes, there are small
feature improvements and bug fixes, such as with last year’s version 5.1, which
modified the canvas 2D element and further cleaned up HTML5.
Next up is version 5.2, with features such as, tentatively, the menu element,
representing a group of commands that can be activated. Release 5.2 also hones
in on Web Content Security Policy, providing a way for developers to control
resource access. The upgrade also could handle email addresses in non-Latin
alphabets. Still, HTML5.2 is considered a minor revision.
But the W3C wants more frequent updates of the core HTML specification,
updating it every year instead of every ten to 15 years as in previous HTML
major-version shifts, which does not keep up with web time, Jaffe said.
However, those major revisions won’t necessarily get whole-number upgrades,
such as from HTML5 to HTML6 to HTML7.
What might make for an HTML5 successor
So will there ever be an HTML6? Jaffe suggests that web payments might justify
such a whole-number revision, to provide a consistent way of doing payments on
the web. “If we were going to linearly call something HTML6, this might be it.”
Although buying through the web is not new, the increased dominance of mobile
web usage is causing people to abandon shopping carts because of the
complexity—and may require a different approach baked into HTML itself. The W3C
has a working group to explore this very issue.
W3C also is working on Web Components, a framework to identify reusable website
components, and Service Workers, to make it easier to run multiple functions
inside a browser, featuring offline capabilities. Maybe they’ll justify a name
change to HTML6.
The open web branches HTML5 into new areas
While HTML5 has anchored the open web platform, the platform itself has
increasingly become bigger than just HTML, Jaffe said. So the W3C is working on
security, performance, and streaming.
A streaming-related effort involves the proposed Encrypted Media Extensions
(EME) standard, which extends the HTMLMediaElement (in HTML5.1) to provide APIs
for controlling playback of encrypted content and connecting to a digital
rights management system. EME provides a standard way of displaying video
through browsers. Previously, there was no interoperability, Jaffe said. “It’s
a tremendous improvement over the nonstandardized method of delivering video
today,” which is often Netscape’s controversial NPAPI plug-in technology.
Tim Berner-Lee, W3C director and considered the inventor of the web, endorsed
the EME proposal in February, saying it provides a relatively safe way to watch
a movie online. But others have opposed the proposal. Berners-Lee himself notes
there are problems with DRM for developers and issues around posterity and laws.
For web security, the W3C has three efforts:
A web authentication framework. In progress, the goal is to support security
via multifactor authentication. “We really want to get away from passwords,”
Jaffe said.
Web Crypto API. Completed earlier this year, it provides a JavaScript API for
basic cryptographic operations in web applications.
Best practices for web-development security. Also completed, these practices
are meant to prevent sharing of information from one application to another and
thus violate user privacy.
Paul Krill is an editor at large at InfoWorld, whose coverage focuses on
application development.
