Selectors API Last Call

Script, Standards, W3C

Today, the Selectors API specification has been published as a Last Call Working Draft. Assuming all goes well, and there are no comments requiring substantial changes over the 4 week review period, the spec will go to Candidate Recommendation shortly after, at which point it will remain until there are two interoperable implementations. Although the spec says comments are welcome until 2008-01-06, this is likely to be extended by a couple of weeks due to the delay in publishing.

I need to begin work on a test suite for it very soon so that we can help ensure interoperable implementations with as few bugs as possible. It would be nice to see this implemented in the major browsers soon, although I could only speculate about when each one will.

Plans to Publish HTML5

MarkUp, W3C

It finally looks like the HTML working group will publish the First Public Working Draft of HTML 5 on 2008-01-22, pending the outcome of another working group vote. Mike Smith, the group’s W3C Staff Contact, just made the announcement on the mailing list. It’s been 9½ months since the HTMLWG was formed at the W3C and many of us have been becoming frustrated with the delays, so it is nice to finally have a publication schedule.

The HTML 4.0 Recommendation was first published on 1997-12-18 (though it was updated a couple of times since then). It’s been just over a decade; the anniversary was just a few days ago. It would have been nice to get the FPWD published close to this anniversary, or to at least publish before the end of the year, but alas, that can’t happen. However, publishing in January is still great news!

A Prevew of HTML 5 on A List Apart

MarkUp, Opera, W3C, WebKit, WHATWG

I recently had my first article published on A List Apart entitled A Preview of HTML 5. It discusses the new sectioning elements; and the video and audio elements. I’ve made some working examples for the video element based upon those I gave in the article so you can grab the experimental build of Opera or WebKit nightly and try it out.