Welcome Back, HTML

Younger readers of this blog probably don't remember the golden cyber-age known as Dotcom 1.0, but one of its characteristics was the constant upgrading of the basic HTML specification. And then, in 1999, at HTML4, it stopped, as everyone got excited about XML (remember XML?).

It's been a long time coming, but at last we have HTML5, AKA Web Applications 1.0. Here's a good intro to the subject:

Development of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) stopped in 1999 with HTML 4. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) focused its efforts on changing the underlying syntax of HTML from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) to Extensible Markup Language (XML), as well as completely new markup languages like Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), XForms, and MathML. Browser vendors focused on browser features like tabs and Rich Site Summary (RSS) readers. Web designers started learning Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and the JavaScript™ language to build their own applications on top of the existing frameworks using Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax). But HTML itself grew hardly at all in the next eight years.

Recently, the beast came back to life. Three major browser vendors—Apple, Opera, and the Mozilla Foundation—came together as the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WhatWG) to develop an updated and upgraded version of classic HTML. More recently, the W3C took note of these developments and started its own next-generation HTML effort with many of the same members. Eventually, the two efforts will likely be merged. Although many details remain to be argued over, the outlines of the next version of HTML are becoming clear.

This new version of HTML—usually called HTML 5, although it also goes under the name Web Applications 1.0—would be instantly recognizable to a Web designer frozen in ice in 1999 and thawed today.

Welcome back, HTML, we've missed you.