There has been a lot of talk in the past few days about the term “HTML5″ and what it should and should not encompass. Web geeks in the know realize that true HTML5 deals with the whatwg’s recommendations for modernizing HTML, bringing it into conformance with demands of the 21st Century world wide web. It has nothing special to say about CSS, DOM, or the weather in downtown Frankfort, Kentucky. However, “HTML5″ is starting to get tossed around as an umbrella term covering other new and exciting emerging web technologies such as CSS3, the geolocation API, and an assortment of other fun stuff rolling down the information superhighway. While I think it’s important that developers always keep in mind the distinctions about the different technologies that make up the bleeding edge of The Web To Come, I tend to find myself agreeing more with Jeff Croft and Peter-Paul Koch on the matter.
Yeah, sure. I’m a purist. Or rather, I was a purist before 10 years of building web sites in the typical business and/or government world. That experience has taught me that most web developers, myself included, don’t live in a homogeneous web vacuum. Rather we live in a marketing whirlpool, and buzz, sexy, and sizzle are the driving forces that spin the spin. I think I’d be better characterized as a pragmatist now. Sure I still get my hackles up just a tad when someone uses the term AJAX interchangeably with DHTML. (I mean, come on! DHTML is clearly not what Garrett was talking about when he coined the term.) Still, these days I usually just sit down and take a few deep breaths until the desire to scramble onto the nearest soapbox and start lecturing goes away. When all was said and done, a broader meaning for what was originally a narrow term ended up being a good thing. People got excited about AJAX, and that excitement helped fuel the revolution du jour. Marketing people heard the word and the energy associated with it, and they wanted that for their site. They weren’t excited about the AJAX (sensu stricto) that could make your web site talk to the server without having to refresh the page. They were excited about that other AJAX (sensu lato): the Google Maps; the Base Camps; the Flickrs. They wanted the cool, the pow, and the wow.
I’m sure a little standardsista part of me will cringe a tiny bit if and when a project manager comes to me and asks me to add geolocation to a site because they’d heard about this new “HTML5″ thing and thinks we should get in on that. Still I’ll stifle the “but that’s not HTML5″ explanation and gleefully implement whatever they ask, giggling as I do. So yeah, I don’t care what you call the latest collective bleeding edge technologies as a whole. HTML5. Web 2.1. Web++. Whatever it takes to get the right people excited about the evolving standards and technologies for the web and to convince them they can start using these technologies today. It doesn’t matter to me as long as that excitement drives adoption.
It’s an exciting time to be a web developer!