HTML5: Up and Running

An Unbroken Line

I am extraordinarily fascinated with all aspects of this almost 17-year-old conversation that led to the creation of an HTML element that has been used on virtually every web page ever published. Consider this:

• HTTP still exists. It successfully evolved from 0.9 into 1.0 and later 1.1, and still it evolves.

• HTML still exists. That rudimentary data format (it didn’t even support inline images!) successfully evolved into 2.0, 3.2, and 4.0. HTML is an unbroken line. A twisted, knotted, snarled line, to be sure—there were plenty of “dead branches” in the evolutionary tree, places where standards-minded people got ahead of themselves (and ahead of authors and implementors)—but still, here we are in 2010, and web pages from 1990 still render in modern browsers. I just loaded one up in the browser of my state-of-the-art Android mobile phone, and I didn’t even get prompted to “please wait while importing legacy format...”

• HTML has always been a conversation between browser makers, authors, standards wonks, and other people who just showed up and liked to talk about angle brackets. Most of the successful versions of HTML have been “retro-specs,” catching up to the world while simultaneously trying to nudge it in the right direction. Anyone who tells you that HTML should be kept “pure” (presumably by ignoring browser makers, or ignoring authors, or both) is simply misinformed. HTML has never been pure, and all attempts to purify it have been spectacular failures, matched only by the attempts to replace it.

• None of the browsers in use in 1993 still exist in any recognizable form. Netscape Navigator was abandoned in 1998 and rewritten from scratch to create the Mozilla Suite, which was then forked to create Firefox. Internet Explorer had its humble “beginnings” in “Microsoft Plus! for Windows 95,” where it was bundled with some desktop themes and a pinball game; but of course, that browser can be traced back further too.

• Some of the operating systems from 1993 still exist, but none of them are relevant to the modern Web. Most people today who “experience” the Web do so on a PC running Windows 2000 or later, a Mac running Mac OS X, a PC running some flavor of Linux, or a handheld device like an iPhone. In 1993, Windows was at Version 3.1 (and competing with OS/2), Macs were running System 7, and Linux was distributed via Usenet. (Want to have some fun? Find a graybeard and whisper “Trumpet Winsock” or “MacPPP.”)

• Some of the same people are still around and still involved in what we now simply call “web standards.” That’s after almost 20 years. And some were involved in predecessors of HTML, going back into the 1980s and before.

• Speaking of predecessors.... With the eventual popularity of HTML and the Web, it is easy to forget the contemporary formats and systems that informed their design. Before you read this chapter, had you ever heard of Andrew? Intermedia? HyTime? And HyTime was not some rinky-dink academic research project; it was an ISO standard approved for military use. It was Big Business. And you can read about it yourself at http://www.sgmlsource.com/history/hthist.htm.

But none of this answers the original question: why do we have an <img> element? Why not an <icon> element? Or an <include> element? Why not a hyperlink with an include attribute, or some combination of rel values? Why an <img> element? Quite simply, because Marc Andreessen shipped one, and shipping code wins.

That’s not to say that all shipping code wins; after all, Andrew and Intermedia and HyTime shipped code too. Code is necessary but not sufficient for success. And I certainly don’t mean to say that shipping code before a standard will produce the best solution. Marc’s <img> element didn’t mandate a common graphics format; it didn’t define how text flowed around it; it didn’t support text alternatives or fallback content for older browsers. And 17 years later, we’re still struggling with content sniffing, and it’s still a source of crazy security vulnerabilities. You can trace that through the Great Browser Wars, all the way back to February 25, 1993, when Marc Andreessen offhandedly remarked, “MIME, someday, maybe,” and then shipped his code anyway.