What is more
important to the future of the web than the future of HTML, and adoption of technology in the
browsers? Our own Ian Hickson has been blazing a trail under the WHATWG umbrella, as he tries
to do the right thing, and standardize what is already being down, instead of making a
specification in an isolated room.
Vlad Alexander from xhtml.com was invited to post a series of questions to the X/HTML 5
team on their public mailing list, and recently published their
Q & A session.
If you haven't stayed up to date on
what is happening around the standards, take a peek to see how the team answered questions
such as:
Why do we need X/HTML 5? When did this need become
apparent?
X/HTML 5 is currently in Working Draft stage. What is the
tentative timetable for moving X/HTML 5 through the standards approval process towards
Recommendation stage?
X/HTML 5 introduces new markup constructs such as
sectioning elements, enhancements to the input element, a construct for dialogs, a way to mark
up figures, and much more. Can you briefly describe these new constructs and the reason they
were added?
X/HTML 5 has a construct for adding additional semantics to
existing elements using predefined class names. Predefined class names could be the most
controversial part of X/HTML 5, because the implementation overloads the class attribute.
XHTML 2 provides similar functionality using the role attribute. Which approach is better and
why?
Is it due to a flaw in HTML that it is difficult to build authoring
tools, such as WYSIWYG editors, that generate markup rich in semantics, embody best-practices
and that can be easily used by non-technical people?
Since much of the
content on the Web is created using such authoring tools, can we ever achieve a semantically
rich and accessible Web?
The XHTML 5 spec says that "generally speaking,
authors are discouraged from trying to use XML on the Web". Why write an XML spec like XHTML 5
and then discourage authors from using it? Why not just drop support for XML (XHTML
5)?
