After 7 years, HTML5 is now complete

29 Oct 2014

Having been in development for more than seven years, HTML5 can now be considered complete after its creators, the W3C HTML Working Group, announced it has reached a finalised standard for the platform.

The group that exists within Microsoft’s development body in Canada had been developing the latest internet standard back in 2007, but in its official announcement written by the group’s co-chair, Paul Cotton, a lot had changed during this time.

Since the beginning, he claimed, the group has worked through more then 4,000 errors, ambiguities, and controversies that were resolved across 45,000 messages since March 2007.

The group also released the document which details all their complete standards for the latest HTML for developers to work on.

However, things were not always looking particularly rosy for W3C. It was potentially looking at not completing the standard until the year 2020, that was until W3C formulated its Plan 2014 which Cotton said meant there were some significant compromises that needed to be made with some major shareholders.

Cotton also said the entire process was particularly challenging but sets W3C up for future HTML development.

“We learned many lessons about how an open community can succeed on big, hard challenges. There is more we can learn from other open source and standards community as we go further in that direction in future iterations of web platform standards.”

HTML5 image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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