The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a community that develops protocols and guidelines for the growth of the web, has said to web developers that HTML5 is “not yet ready for production.”
HTML5, which came about by the non-W3C Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group in 2004, should be approved in the next two or three years, but for now, the W3C said that Flash and Silverlight will remain as approved technologies.
“There is already a lot of excitement for HTML5, but it’s a little too early to deploy it because we’re running into interoperability issues,” said Philippe Le Hegaret, interaction domain leader who is responsible for the HTML and SVG spec.
“I don’t think it’s ready for production yet. The real problem is can we make it work across browsers, and at the moment, that is not the case,” said Hegaret.
The industry has seen HTML5 as the next big thing in web technology, with major companies, such as Apple and Google, showing its support.
However, HTML5 has some problems when it comes to its use across browsers. For example, a tag for audio playback is part of the specification, not all browsers support the same audio formats. Firefox and Opera do not support native MP3 playback.
The HTML5 specification also won’t have a native video codec, due to patent issues.
While Le Hegaret sees the use of Flash on websites decreasing as HTML5 grows in popularity, he believes that Flash and Silverlight will still continue to be popular for other reasons, such as DRM controls and embedded ads.
He also believes it will take years for web browsers to support HTML5 in its entirety.
