Category: HTML5

Hyper Text Markup Language version 5

HTML

Looking into evercookie

Things have been rather quiet around here lately as I have been busy with work and school. Something in my twitter stream yesterday caught my eye, though. It seems that Samy Kamkar has come up with a way to make a seriously persistent cookie. How does it work? By storing the cookie value in (currently) 10 different methods.

  • Standard HTTP Cookies
  • Local Shared Objects (Flash Cookies)
  • Storing cookies in RGB values of auto-generated, force-cached PNGs using HTML5 Canvas tag to read pixels (cookies) back out
  • Storing cookies in and reading out Web History
  • Storing cookies in HTTP ETags
  • Internet Explorer userData storage
  • HTML5 Session Storage
  • HTML5 Local Storage
  • HTML5 Global Storage
  • HTML5 Database Storage via SQLite

It seems from the site that this is a project in current development with even more methods to come. Currently the only mitigation is using Safari in Privacy Mode which destroys all versions of the evercookie on browser restart. In the coming weeks I will have some time to spend on personal projects, and I may use some of that time to look into this further.

HTML5

HTML 5 First Public Draft

I realize I am a bit late to the party on this one, but things like work take place while these things are happening. Such is life. Anyhow, on to the content …

The W3C released the first public draft of HTML 5 today. If you want to see the announcement it is a great document for playing buzzword bingo. Aside from links (and buzzword bingo), however, the press release doesn’t have much value to me. The links on the other hand …

The release links to the draft itself, a comprehensive list of differences between HTML 4 and HTML 5, and several process and working-group related informational pages. I say it is worth it just to peruse the links.

There are several new elements listed in HTML 5, many of them structural, (such as section, article, header, nav, footer) and many of them to extend the capabilities of HTML (such as audio, video, canvas [for drawing an image], datagrid, progress). What really stuck out was one element that was never an actual HTML element but was treated as one ‘back in the day’: embed. I find it interesting that it finally made it into the (working draft of) the standard.

There are several new input types like number, datetime and email and a long list of new attributes. A few elements have changed in meaning, while several more elements (and attributes) have been removed entirely. Hooray for CSS doing what CSS does, and double hooray for the end of frameset, frame and noframes!

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Community

Spoke too soon? Formal Objections filed in W3C vote

While the vote totals in the poll are still positive by a large majority, there have been a couple formal objections lodged which could overturn the vote. The W3C‘s process for consensus and dissent allows for formal objections to either be remedied by compromise, or in a case where that compromise is not possible a Chair may record a decision in spite of dissent in order for a group to move on. According to the same process document:

Groups should favor proposals that create the weakest objections. This is preferred over proposals that are supported by a large majority but that cause strong objections from a few people. As part of making a decision where there is dissent, the Chair is expected to be aware of which participants work for the same (or related) Member organizations and weigh their input accordingly.

While there doesn’t seem to be much interest outside the W3C and WHATWG on this issue right now (at least none that I am seeing online) I will be keeping a close eye on the developments and announcements from W3C to see how this all plays out.

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Community

Looks like WHATWG’s HTML 5 is a go

Although the poll hasn’t closed yet (it is open until May 4) 90 96 of the 115 voting members of the HTML Working Group have cast their vote, and the results are:

Shall we Adopt HTML5 as our specification text for review?

Yes: 78 84
No: 2
Concur: 7
Abstain: 3

So, even if the remaining 25 19 votes are all no, the vote is to adopt the WHATWG HTML5 (comprised of the Web Apps 1.0 and Web Forms 2.0 specifications) as a starting point for the next HTML version.

Other votes on the page include the decision to name the next HTML specification “HTML 5” and to appoint Ian Hickson and Dave Hyatt as the specification editors. I highly recommend reading the results, in order to see the rationale given by many of the members for their vote on each of the questions, as this gives a valuable insight into where the group currently is and in what direction they are looking to move.

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Edits: updated numbers on 5/3

Community

WHATWG Pitches HTML5 to W3C

The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) has sent a Proposal to Adopt HTML5 to the HTML Working Group of the WorldWide Web Consortium (W3C).

HTML5, currently in working draft status is comprised of the Web Apps 1.0 and Web Forms 2.0 specifications. While the W3C XHTML2 Working Group has just been chartered in March 2007, with a goal date for completion of December 2009, the work of WHATWG on the HTML5 recommendation has been ongoing since 2004 and has support from Apple, Opera and Mozilla. In explaining the relationship between XHTML2 and HTML5 the Web Apps 1.0 draft has this to say:

1.3.4. Relationship to XHTML2

This section is non-normative.

XHTML2 [XHTML2] defines a new HTML vocabulary with better features for hyperlinks, multimedia content, annotating document edits, rich metadata, declarative interactive forms, and describing the semantics of human literary works such as poems and scientific papers.

However, it lacks elements to express the semantics of many of the non-document types of content often seen on the Web. For instance, forum sites, auction sites, search engines, online shops, and the like, do not fit the document metaphor well, and are not covered by XHTML2.

This specification aims to extend HTML so that it is also suitable in these contexts.

XHTML2 and this specification use different namespaces and therefore can both be implemented in the same XML processor.

It will be interesting to see if the WHATWG proposal is taken as the HTML Working Group, like the XHTML2 Working Group, was only chartered in March of 2007, and as such, failure to adopt the proposed HTML5 draft would mean the need to reinvent the wheel.

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