1.1 How It All Started 5Admitting that XHTML2 had failed to become the new web language, he an-
nounced the creation of a new HTML working group—on a wider scale this time.
The group would involve the browser vendors and would aim at further develop-
ing both HTML and XHTML step by step. In the last paragraph of his blog entry
he emphasizes his conviction that this is the right way to go:
This is going to be a very major collaboration on a very important spec, one
of the crown jewels of web technology. Even though hundreds of people will
be involved, we are evolving the technology which millions going on billions
will use in the future. There won’t seem like enough thankyous to go around
some days. But we will be maintaining something very important and creat-
ing something even better.In March 2007, the time had come: The new HTML Working Group was formed.
Shortly after it had been announced to the W3C, all members of the WHATWG
were invited to participate in the HTML WG—an offer the WHATWG gratefully
accepted.
A few months later, a vote was taken to decide if the specification drawn up by
the WHATWG should become the basis of the new, joint HTML5 specification. In
contrast to the vote taken during the Workshop in 2004, the result was in favor,
with 43 voting for, 5 voting against, 4 people abstaining, and 1 explicitly reject-
ing. After a delay of three years, the original idea of further developing HTML had
prevailed.
But this was just the beginning: New ways of cooperating had to be found—a task
that proved to be anything but easy because the philosophies of WHATWG and
W3C were only compatible to a limited extent. The fact that the two camps were
not always in agreement was reflected not only in extensive discussion threads in
the W3C’s own archived and publicly accessible public-html mailing list (http://
lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html), but was also evident in the assess-
ment of the HTML5 project’s road map.
Although the W3C assumed in its Charter that HTML5 would reach Recommen-
dation in Q3 of 2010, Ian Hickson of the WHATWG anticipated a much longer
period. The year 2022 has often been suggested, but such a long time span is con-
sidered completely unacceptable by many critics. Yet this time frame may seem
more realistic if you take into account the ambitious aim of HTML5 to replace
the three specifications—HTML4, DOM2 HTML, and XHTML1—and to expand
them significantly, to create a test suite with thousands of tests, and to prescribe
two faultless implementations of the standard as proof of concept.
One look at the decision-policy rules of the HTML WG gives you an inkling of
how complicated the decision-making process of the two groups involved in fur-
ther developing the specification is (http://dev.w3.org/html5/decision-policy/
decision-policy.html). After the XHTML2 Working Group was disbanded in late
2009, the number of critics willing to fully exploit this decision policy increased.