Afterword
The development of HTML5 is progressing rapidly. The specification is amended
and improved daily, angles and corners are smoothed, superfluous components
are removed, and if necessary, new features are added. The driving force behind
this process is an active community of representatives of WHATWG, W3C, the
browser manufacturers, interested individuals, and of course Ian Hickson, the
disputatious editor of the specification, whose decisions quite often lead to heat-
ed debates.
If he has his way, the HTML standard of the future will be developed as a “living
standard” continuously and without a version number. Instead of descriptions,
such as HTML5, HTML6, or HTML-Next, we would then simply use the term
HTML. The implementation of the specification should take place in parallel to
its development—a wish that has already been fulfilled in practice, because al-
though the specification is not yet completely final, many of its components are
already implemented in the main browsers.