WHATWG

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Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group
AbbreviationWHATWG
Formation4 June 2004;20 years ago (2004-06-04)
PurposeDeveloping web standards
Membership
Apple Inc., Google LLC, Microsoft Corporation, Mozilla Corporation [1]
Main organ
Steering Group
Website whatwg.org

The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) is a community of people interested in evolving HTML and related technologies. The WHATWG was founded by individuals from Apple Inc., the Mozilla Foundation and Opera Software, leading Web browser vendors in 2004. [2] [3]

Contents

WHATWG is responsible for maintaining multiple web-related technical standards, including the specifications for the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) and the Document Object Model (DOM). [4] [5] The central organizational membership and control of WHATWG – its "Steering Group" – consists of Apple, Mozilla, Google, and Microsoft. WHATWG community members work with the editor of the specifications to ensure correct implementation. [6]

History

The WHATWG was formed in response to the slow development of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web standards and W3C's decision to abandon HTML in favor of XML-based technologies. [7] The WHATWG mailing list was announced on 4 June 2004, [8] two days after the initiatives of a joint Opera–Mozilla position paper [9] had been voted down by the W3C members at the W3C Workshop on Web Applications and Compound Documents. [10]

On 10 April 2007, the Mozilla Foundation, Apple, and Opera Software proposed [11] that the new HTML working group of the W3C adopt the WHATWG's HTML5 as the starting point of its work and name its future deliverable as "HTML5" (though the WHATWG specification was later renamed HTML Living Standard).[ citation needed ]

On 9 May 2007, the new HTML working group of the W3C resolved to do that. [12] An Internet Explorer platform architect from Microsoft was invited but did not join, citing the lack of a patent policy to ensure all specifications can be implemented on a royalty-free basis. [13] Since then, the W3C and the WHATWG had been developing HTML independently, at times causing specifications to diverge. [14]

In 2017, the WHATWG established an intellectual property rights agreement that includes a patent policy. [15] This spurred a renewed attempt to allow the W3C and the WHATWG to work together on specifications. In 2019, the W3C and WHATWG agreed to a memorandum of understanding where development of HTML and DOM specifications would be done principally in the WHATWG. [14] [16]

The editor has significant control over the specification, but the community can influence the decisions of the editor. [17] In one case, editor Ian Hickson proposed replacing the <time> tag with a more generic <data> tag, but the community disagreed and the change was reverted. [17]

Web Hypertext Application Technology Task Force

Initially, the name Web Hypertext Application Technology Task Force was also used, [18] [19] [20] [21] along with variant abbreviations including WHAT Working Group, [22] WHAT Task Force and WHATTF. [23] After some time using both the whattf.org and whatwg.org domain names, [21] the name WHATWG was eventually standardized on. The namespace URI http://whattf.org/datatype-draft remains in use for the HTML validator's data type library. [24]

Transition of HTML Publication to WHATWG

On 28 May 2019, the W3C announced that WHATWG would be the sole publisher of the HTML and DOM standards. [25] [26] [16] [27] The W3C and WHATWG had been publishing competing standards since 2012. While the W3C standard was identical to the WHATWG in 2007 the standards have since progressively diverged due to different design decisions. [28] The WHATWG "Living Standard" had been the de facto web standard for some time. [29]

Specifications

The WHATWG publishes a number of standards that form a substantial portion of the web platform including:

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Document Object Model</span> Convention for representing and interacting with objects in HTML, XHTML, and XML documents

The Document Object Model (DOM) is a cross-platform and language-independent interface that treats an HTML or XML document as a tree structure wherein each node is an object representing a part of the document. The DOM represents a document with a logical tree. Each branch of the tree ends in a node, and each node contains objects. DOM methods allow programmatic access to the tree; with them one can change the structure, style or content of a document. Nodes can have event handlers attached to them. Once an event is triggered, the event handlers get executed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HTML</span> HyperText Markup Language

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScript.

Web standards are the formal, non-proprietary standards and other technical specifications that define and describe aspects of the World Wide Web. In recent years, the term has been more frequently associated with the trend of endorsing a set of standardized best practices for building web sites, and a philosophy of web design and development that includes those methods.

In web development, "tag soup" is a pejorative for HTML written for a web page that is syntactically or structurally incorrect. Web browsers have historically treated structural or syntax errors in HTML leniently, so there has been little pressure for web developers to follow published standards. Therefore there is a need for all browser implementations to provide mechanisms to cope with the appearance of "tag soup", accepting and correcting for invalid syntax and structure where possible.

DOM Events are a signal that something has occurred, or is occurring, and can be triggered by user interactions or by the browser. Client-side scripting languages like JavaScript, JScript, VBScript, and Java can register various event handlers or listeners on the element nodes inside a DOM tree, such as in HTML, XHTML, XUL, and SVG documents.

The canvas element is part of HTML5 and allows for dynamic, scriptable rendering of 2D shapes and bitmap images. It is a low level, procedural model that updates a bitmap. HTML5 Canvas also helps in making 2D games.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">HTTP referer</span> HTTP header field

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">HTML5</span> Fifth and previous version of HyperText Markup Language

HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML Living Standard. It is maintained by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), a consortium of the major browser vendors.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian Hickson</span> Swiss scholar

Ian "Hixie" Hickson is the author and maintainer of the Acid2 and Acid3 tests, the WHATWG HTML 5 specification, and the Pingback specification, and the early working draft of Web Applications 1.0. He is known as a proponent of Web standards, and has played a crucial role in the development of specifications such as CSS. Hickson was a co-editor of the CSS 2.1 specification.

Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) is part of the family of XML markup languages which mirrors or extends versions of the widely used HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the language in which Web pages are formulated.

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The HTML5 draft specification adds video and audio elements for embedding video and audio in HTML documents. The specification had formerly recommended support for playback of Theora video and Vorbis audio encapsulated in Ogg containers to provide for easier distribution of audio and video over the internet by using open standards, but the recommendation was soon after dropped.

A web worker, as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), is a JavaScript script executed from an HTML page that runs in the background, independently of scripts that may also have been executed from the same HTML page. Web workers are often able to utilize multi-core CPUs more effectively.

Microdata is a WHATWG HTML specification used to nest metadata within existing content on web pages. Search engines, web crawlers, and browsers can extract and process Microdata from a web page and use it to provide a richer browsing experience for users. Search engines benefit greatly from direct access to Microdata because it allows them to understand the information on web pages and provide more relevant results to users. Microdata uses a supporting vocabulary to describe an item and name-value pairs to assign values to its properties. Microdata is an attempt to provide a simpler way of annotating HTML elements with machine-readable tags than the similar approaches of using RDFa and microformats.

Server-Sent Events (SSE) is a server push technology enabling a client to receive automatic updates from a server via an HTTP connection, and describes how servers can initiate data transmission towards clients once an initial client connection has been established. They are commonly used to send message updates or continuous data streams to a browser client and designed to enhance native, cross-browser streaming through a JavaScript API called EventSource, through which a client requests a particular URL in order to receive an event stream. The EventSource API is standardized as part of HTML Living Standard by the WHATWG. The media type for SSE is text/event-stream.

The Web platform is a collection of technologies developed as open standards by the World Wide Web Consortium and other standardization bodies such as the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group, the Unicode Consortium, the Internet Engineering Task Force, and Ecma International. It is the umbrella term introduced by the World Wide Web Consortium, and in 2011 it was defined as "a platform for innovation, consolidation and cost efficiencies" by W3C CEO Jeff Jaffe. Being built on The evergreen Web has allowed for the addition of new capabilities while addressing security and privacy risks. Additionally, developers are enabled to build interoperable content on a cohesive platform.

HTML audio is a subject of the HTML specification, incorporating audio input, playback, and synthesis, as well as speech to text, all in the browser.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anne van Kesteren</span> Dutch open source contributor

Anne van Kesteren is an open web standards author and open source contributor. He has written and edits several web standards specifications including Fullscreen API, XMLHttpRequest, and URL. Formerly worked on standards issues as a software engineer at Opera Software, he started working at Mozilla on 2013-02-04. He was Mozilla’s representative on the WHATWG Steering Group. He was an elected participant in the W3C Technical Architecture Group (TAG) from 2013 to 2014.

References

  1. ↑ "Steering Group Agreement – WHATWG". whatwg.org. WHATWG.
  2. ↑ "FAQ – What is the WHATWG?". WHATWG. 12 February 2010. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  3. ↑ Reid, Jonathan (2015). "1 - Welcome to HTML5". HTML5 Programmer's Reference. Apress. pp. In section "A Brief History of HTML" -- "The Formation of the WHATWG and the Creation of HTML5". ISBN   9781430263678 . Retrieved 2 December 2015.
  4. ↑ Cohen, Nancy; Xplore, Tech. "W3C and WHATWG agreement: Single version of HTML, DOM specifications". techxplore.com. Retrieved 19 May 2023.
  5. ↑ "Alliance gives HTML a stronger future after decade-long struggle to control the web's core tech". CNET. Retrieved 19 May 2023.
  6. ↑ "FAQ – How does the WHATWG work?". WHATWG. 22 November 2012. Retrieved 1 January 2013. If necessary, controversies are resolved by the Steering Group with members appointed from the organizations that develop browser engines, as a backstop to ensure the editor's judgment aligns with what they will implement.
  7. ↑ "HTML5: A vocabulary and associated APIs for HTML and XHTML". W3C Recommendations. W3C. Archived from the original on 28 October 2014. Retrieved 21 October 2015. Shortly thereafter, Apple, Mozilla, and Opera jointly announced their intent to continue working on the effort under the umbrella of a new venue called the WHATWG.
  8. ↑ Hickson, Ian (4 June 2004). "WHAT open mailing list announcement". WHATWG. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  9. ↑ Joint Opera–Mozilla position paper voted down prior to the founding of the WHATWG: Position Paper for the W3C Workshop on Web Applications and Compound Documents
  10. ↑ "W3C Workshop on Web Applications and Compound Documents (Day 2) Jun 2, 2004". World Wide Web Consortium. 2 June 2004. Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  11. ↑ Stachowiak, Maciej (9 April 2007). "Proposal to Adopt HTML5". World Wide Web Consortium . Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  12. ↑ Connolly, Dan (9 May 2007). "results of HTML 5 text, editor, name questions". World Wide Web Consortium . Retrieved 24 February 2010.
  13. ↑ Wilson, Chris (10 January 2007). "You, me and the W3C (aka Reinventing HTML)". Albatross! The personal blog of Chris Wilson, Platform Architect of the Internet Explorer Platform team at Microsoft. Microsoft . Retrieved 30 January 2009.
  14. 1 2 Cimpanu, Catalin (28 May 2019). "Browser vendors win war with W3C over HTML and DOM standards". ZDNet.
  15. ↑ Van Kesteren, Anne (11 December 2017). "Further working mode changes". The WHATWG Blog. WHATWG.
  16. 1 2 "Memorandum of Understanding Between W3C and WHATWG". W3C. 28 May 2019. Archived from the original on 29 May 2019. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
  17. 1 2 Way, Jeffrey. "A Brief History of HTML5" . Retrieved 4 October 2016.
  18. ↑ "Web Hypertext Application Technology Task Force". Archived from the original on 28 August 2018.
  19. ↑ "HTML 5 Draft Recommendation — 7 July 2008". Web Hypertext Application Technology Task Force. 7 July 2008. Archived from the original on 4 September 2018.
  20. ↑ Hickson, Ian (4 June 2004). "WHAT open mailing list announcement". Web Hypertext Application Technology Task Force. Archived from the original on 10 January 2005.
  21. 1 2 "Web Hypertext Application Technology Task Force Charter". WHATTF.org. Web Hypertext Application Technology Task Force. Archived from the original on 4 July 2007. Compare identical group charter with identical membership list on WHATWG.org, archived 2007-07-07.
  22. ↑ "Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group Mailing List". Archived from the original on 10 October 2006.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  23. ↑ "Web Hypertext Application Technology Task Force Mailing List". Archived from the original on 4 July 2007.
  24. ↑ "form-datatypes.rnc". The Nu Html Checker (v.Nu).
  25. ↑ Jaffe, Jeff (28 May 2019). "W3C and WHATWG to Work Together to Advance the Open Web Platform". W3C Blog. Archived from the original on 29 May 2019. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
  26. ↑ "W3C and the WHATWG Signed an Agreement to Collaborate on a Single Version of HTML and DOM". W3C. 28 May 2019. Archived from the original on 29 May 2019. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
  27. ↑ Cimpanu, Catalin (29 May 2019). "Browser vendors Win War with W3C over HTML and DOM standards". ZDNet. Archived from the original on 29 May 2019. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
  28. ↑ "W3C - WHATWG Wiki". WHATWG Wiki. Archived from the original on 29 May 2019. Retrieved 29 May 2019.
  29. ↑ Shankland, Stephen (9 July 2009). "An epitaph for the Web standard, XHTML 2". CNET. CBS INTERACTIVE INC.
  30. ↑ "Is this HTML5?". WHATWG. 13 June 2019. Retrieved 13 June 2019.
  31. ↑ Hickson, Ian (19 January 2011). "HTML is the new HTML5". WHATWG. Retrieved 21 January 2011.
  32. ↑ "Fetch Standard". WHATWG. 3 May 2019. Retrieved 13 June 2019.
  33. ↑ "whatwg-url". npm (software) . 18 August 2018. Archived from the original on 25 July 2019. Retrieved 25 July 2019. whatwg-url is a full implementation of the WHATWG URL Standard. It can be used standalone, but it also exposes a lot of the internal algorithms that are useful for integrating a URL parser into a project like jsdom.
  34. ↑ "Web IDL Standard". webidl.spec.whatwg.org. Retrieved 3 September 2023.
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