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HTML6: The Next Big Thing After HTML5

Writen by Anamaria / Comments Off on HTML6: The Next Big Thing After HTML5

A while back we told you all about the official launch of HTML5, about how it’s been in the works for some time now and that W3C had finally drawn the line and announced the definitive edition for HTML5. (Unlike a certain George Lucas who keeps insisting that a project is never done and that that gives him free reign to keep altering previous releases endlessly).

But still, as it is human nature to expand your horizons, we ask: ‘What’s next?’. Well, naturally, it’s HTML6, and let me tell you, W3C has wasted no time in making sure this new version is the buzz all across the Internet. So, let’s get down to it, what is HTML6 really all about?

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First off, what’s clear about this new addition to the HTML family is that it will try to bring more semantic markup to the table. HTML5 was the ultimate addition for web developers everywhere. With it came JavaScript APIs, geolocation, localStorage and tags like <header>, <footer> and <nav>. What HTML6 aims to add is the possibility to go beyond creating containers in your page and assigning them and id in hopes of keeping better track of them. The proposed solution is to turn HTML into a much more human-friendly coding language that will allow you to define containers and elements in any way you see fit. The way they go about it is this: they combine HTML with XML offering you the possibility to create any tag you want or need while W3C reserves and uses a large variety of namespaces that are then employed to call the HTML APIs you need.

We now have tags like: <html>, <body>, <title>.

With HTML6, we’re going to have namespace elements like: <html:media type=”video”>, <html:title>.

The starting point is that W3C will reserve rights to all namespaces and each namespace it reserves will trigger a call to HTML API that will know what to do. The tags you will define within a namespace won’t mean anything to the browser, but it will increase your code’s readability by ten-fold.

What are some of the APIs you’d call? Well, first off there’s the HTML API that will know how to deal with all kinds of namespaces. Take, for example, the namespace for link, it will look like <html:link> and it comes with the following types:

  • Charset – The character encoding.
  • Href – The link to the source file.
  • Media – The type of device the item should run on, like “mobile” or “tablet”.
  • Type: The MIME type of the document, for example, text/Javascript.

Another API is the HTML Forms API which has been separated from the big HTML API due to the fact that its development might have hinthered the other somewhat as well as the fact that Forms can easily be envisioned as stand alone entities. Tags for forms will change in much the same way that those for simple HTML will, making sure they will still supply you with a wide variety of input tipes, input attributes and additional tags.

Speaking of tags, one of the most anticipated and exciting new tags is the <carousel> tag. This new tag will make it all the more easier to implement the ever popular carousels in your web pages. Apparently, it has sparked a few controversies over at W3O, with CEO Jeffery Jaffe being quoted to say ‘We couldn’t agree on a set of features, so we just dumped everything into this one element so everyone would shut up about it. I was afraid it might come to blows.’.

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To find out more information about the changes HTML6 will bring and also see some first hand examples of code, check out this article.

Disclaimer: W3C has chosen to make HTML5 a living standard and they are debating whether to drop the numeration all together, so we may end up not actually calling it HTML6 after all.

Anamaria

I read, I write, I sleep.

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