Web Standards Blog Posts

As part of the online demo at try.powermapper.com we collect summary statistics about pages scanned by our service. One interesting statistic covers versions of HTML and XHTML in common use. As of March 2019: HTML 5 DOCTYPEs account for over 90% of pages scanned (up from 8% in 2011) XHTML 1.0 DOCTYPEs account for under 5% of pages scanned (down from 60% in 2011) XHTML 1.1 DOCTYPEs have vanished, and account for 0% of pages scanned (down from 1% in 2011) HTML 4.

After 4 years of development HTML 5.0 finally exited draft status and became a W3 Candidate Recommendation on Dec 17, 2012. HTML 5 will now go through the final stages of the W3 standardization process before becoming a full Recommendation in 2014 (the final published standard). The only changes now to HTML 5.0 will be bug fixes, fixing typos and the possible removal of "at risk" features. New features will be added to the HTML 5.

This diagram shows how web standards have developed since 1994. Originally HTML and related standards were discussed and agreed by a small group of interested parties on a mailing list. Later the W3 was formed, and it put in place increasingly rigorous processes, with increasing amounts of public consultation. While solid process and consultation is a good thing, one striking point is how long it now takes to get W3 standards from Draft to Recommendation status.

The HTML 4.01 standard was introduced in 1999, but 11 years later, no major vendor fully implements it.

Controversial, perhaps, but also true. A lot of flak is rightly directed at Internet Explorer’s lack of standards support, but the other browser vendors aren’t blameless either.