HTML 5 Splits into Two Standards!

he two organizations currently responsible for the development of HTML have decided on a degree of separation and this means that in the future there will be two versions of HTML5 - the snapshot and the living standard.

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/191-htmlcss/4531-which-html5-whatwg-and-w3c-split.html

Good or bad? What does this mean for us?

Neither good nor bad, IMO. It's really just formalising the current situation.

As Ian Elliot says further on, "My guess is that Chrome and Firefox will adopt as much of the new stuff as possible and Microsoft will simply pick which bits most suit its corporate interests" - and that's exactly what's been the situation for quite some time now, with IE not a suitable vehicle for many HTML5 games.

So, in a word, SNAFU.

I'm not exactly excited, anything that allows a browser to simply stop implementing features isn't a big tick in my book; we could well have one browser doing the bare minimum and another keeping right up to the latest spec... It would similar to the IE/Chrome divide we have now, except much more dramatic in my eyes, there's a chance it could overcomplicate the dev process and make optimisation a real headache down the line.

Not saying that Microsoft has been stellar up until now mind you...

On one hand, the WHATWG now has the freedom to advance the HTML5 standard as much as they want, while the W3C is left behind. On the other hand, MS will generally stick with features for IE that suit it most.

Though, really, it's not gonna make much difference, I plan on adding an advisory notice in my games telling IE users to switch to Firefox or Chrome for better performance. It's not that much of a hassle to switch, and I don't see the point in accommodating a browser that doesn't keep up in terms of performance and features.

And here we go again with the corporate nonsense. Why can't they just stick to a standard, call it definitive and leave it at that? Why even bother with shady implements (mp3 comes to mind) where other alternatives, free of hassle, exist?

I can't really understand these entities. Instead of making things easy, they seem to impede development, making stuff hard for the developers, that need to take care of different browsers and even the users, that just don't want/care to change browser because of a game.

The industry loves standards. that's why there are so many different ones! Crazy.

http://anselm-hannemann.com/blog/2012/05/13/why-the-whatwg-somehow-sucks/