HTML,The Living Language

The switch from the W3C to the WHATWG and back to the W3C again has led to a rather unusual arrangement. Technically, the W3C in charge of determining what is and isn’t official HTML5. But at the same time, the WHATWG continues its work dreaming up future HTML features. Only now, they no longer refer to their work as HTML5. They simply call it HTML, explaining that HTML will continue as a living language.


Because HTML is a living language, an HTML page will never become obsolete and stop working. HTML pages will never need a version number (even in the doctype), and web developers will never need to “upgrade” their markup from one version to another to get it to work on new browsers. Because HTML is a living language, new features (and new elements) may be added to the HTML standard at any time. Some web pages may choose to take advantage of these features, and some browsers may choose to support them. But features won’t be tied to a specific version number.

When web developers hear about this plan, their first reaction is usually unmitigated horror. After all, who wants to deal with a world of wildly variable standards support, where developers need to pick and choose the features they use based on the likelihood these features will be supported? However, on reflection, most web developers come to a grudging realization: for better or worse, this is exactly the way browsers work today, and the way they’ve worked since the dawn of the Web.

As explained earlier, today’s browsers are happy with any mishmash of supported features. You can take a state-of-the-art XHTML page and add something as scan dalously backward as the <marquee> element (an obsolete feature for creating scrolling text), and no browser will complain. Similarly, browsers have well-known holes in their support for even the oldest standards. For example, browser makers started implementing CSS3 before CSS2 support was finished, and many CSS2 features were later dropped. The only difference is that now HTML5 makes the “living language” status official. Still, it’s no small irony that just as HTML is embarking on a new, innovative chapter, it has finally returned full circle to its roots.