Jolie O’Dell writes in ReadWriteWeb:
“It’s official: Google is ditching its homegrown Gears offline web app API in favor of backing HTML5 for the win.
Now that the Chrome browser is becoming available for Mac, and the Snow Leopard OS doesn’t play nicely with Gears, a Google rep confirmed the company has decided to trash the whole works and wait for HTML5, even though the spec isn’t yet ready and isn’t supported by commercially available browsers.”
Wikipedia explains:
HTML5 is the next major revision of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), the core markup language of the World Wide Web. The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) started work on the specification in June 2004 under the name Web Applications 1.0. As of October 2009, the specification is in the “Last Call” state at the WHATWG
HTML5 is the proposed next standard for HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0 and DOM Level 2 HTML.
HTML5 aims to reduce the need for proprietary plug-in-based rich Internet application (RIA) technologies such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Sun JavaFX, though it would take many years to do so.
The ideas behind HTML5, originally referred to as Web Applications 1.0, were pioneered in 2004 by the WHATWG; HTML5 incorporates Web Forms 2.0, another WHATWG specification. The HTML5 specification was adopted as the starting point of the work of the new HTML working group of the W3C in 2007. This working group published the First Public Working Draft of the specification on January 22, 2008. The specification is an ongoing work, and is expected to remain so for many years, although parts of HTML5 are going to be finished and implemented in browsers before the whole specification reaches final Recommendation status. The editors are Ian Hickson of Google, Inc. and David Hyatt of Apple, Inc.
As Google Proceeds with the development of Chrome OS, the GoogleGazer sees this as an interesting development. He expects tha Gears with be “out” and HTML5 will be “in” the release code.
Filed under: HTML5 Tagged: | Chrome Browser, Chrome OS, David Hyatt, Google Gears, HTML5, Ian Hickson, WHATWG
