Why did we get off the XHTML superhighway and jump on the scenic route where we ignore the bumps and potholes of bad syntax and limited metadata? What kind of folks are driving the bus right now and are they really going the right direction? Should we stay on the bus while we head into Mobileville? I've decided that the questions you pose are at least if not more important than the answers you think are right. Because that tells you what your vision is and if you've followed a little of this blog, you know that strategic vision is important.
The four hats are:
- The Engineer - who likes all of the functionality logically thought out
- The DBA - who likes the the data well defined and stored
- The Designer - who likes to deliver an emotional message to the customer
- The Businessman - who makes sure the customer is happy and they make a profit
Those four hats have led me to not watch the standards groups as much as watch Google and Amazon for what to use in the future that people want. The real vision of the web is to make money by giving computer users what they want. Waiting for standards groups won't get you there. After all, the current prediction is that CSS3 will be completely standardized by 2022. Here's a rundown on the thinking under each hat:
Engineer
As a software engineer and instructor of many students who become programmers, I know that the web has become populated with these folks that want to turn it into an application environment. That way they can program for it and make it do their will. The back end servers are full of Java, C#, and php and that same force is heading to the browser with JavaScript.
I see the HTML world being altered so that these variable manipulators can have better code and read each other's functions easier. The push in HTML5 towards meaningful naming of the loosely typed datatypes that were divs and spans is going to give programmers a better handle on what it is they are talking to. The code will become less dependent on ids and more dependent on setting up the HTML with the proper element names like <mark>, <time>, <progress>, <meter>, <details> and some of the more argued over names like <style scoped>.
I can see where the types of activities previously handled by JavaScript are being pushed into HTML. This reduces the language down to one, slightly more complex, language. Do we want a merger here of interests? Is the MVC principle being corrupted and should we really mix our text markup with programatic data validation in the same code module? The data and its validation are View Model pieces that are tightly coupled and should be handled together in my mind.
So the future lies with the ultimate merger of HTML and JavaScript and we'll have a Razor style view engine in all browsers eventually. My opinion is not to follow the same syntax and find a better way to merge the two. But the merger will eventually come. Simplified syntax for CSS3 and JavaScript have started to reinvent these stuffy languages and if jQuery can simplify CSS with a replacement like EZ-CSS, sass, or less, then we're on our way. I'm hoping it's not like node.js and stylus, but I need to try those more.
DBA
I also love to understand data and its meaningful use. Having the right field name and the right multiplicity gives me a warm glow. But I also know that too much data analysis can torture those poor programming souls who have to recombine the data for the page they work on.
Here we're not talking about the fields where programmers hand over their data after the output is available but where the data can be semantically meaningful as text. These are the domain entities and at a high level they are represented by <header>, <nav>, <footer>, <section>, <aside> and <article>.
My biggest hurdle here is knowing that the data already comes from a semantically proper framework called the database. If all the work has been done there, then who benefits by rethinking the meaningful structure one more time for the web? The only answer is that the DBA traditionally send the data to the programmers who use that "data markup" for their benefit. The field names become bundled together and as I put back on my Engineer hat, I am happy to create complex View Model types for my View, the web page.
But it's reinventing the wheel when there's a database and it's better for team coding experiences to have more readable code. But wait, is there a web service that might be looking for my article elements? Not yet in the HTML5 way. If you are looking for a current semantic framework of entities, you have to look no further than Google's recommendations. The microformats they recommend carry much more weight for reasons to mark up with them than just a standards board. People are using the schemas for reviews, events, organizations, places, restaurants, recipes, etc. without even knowing about it but you are losing out on having Google process your data and provide search results with it if you don't.
The XHTML push that we unceremoniously dumped was a DBA's dream for a perfect interface language between data source and data consumer. The problem was that it's not a homogenous set of data. Our web DBA's don't work under the same domain and the complexity made it uncomfortable to work with so many needs and choices that we found had already been solved with another data model. Or two (relational and objects). We didn't need a third (XML).
Designer
The designer in me wants to have my great user interface so well integrated into the data and processes that you don't notice. And I want it to be beautiful. That hat wasn't the one the standards committees were wearing when they proposed the gradients and transforms. Misguided blink spans and easy marquees have been put to death as many times as Freddie and Jason but keep coming back for more. Now we have them again, only this time a little more well dressed. I really don't even like the drop shadows but some of these will look much better to the high-res tablet crowd.
I am happy with SVG support and the graphics we can do, but where is my visual SVG graphics designer integrated with HTML and CSS? Android was the last to jump on the SVG graphics bus and most of the rest of the cheesy effects have partial support so I know I will be trying out Inkscape and SVG Edit when I need. Or I'll just sit back and let the widgets take over for me like the SVG based Chart control in Visual Studio and jQuery plugins.
I find the most pleasure with web fonts, especially Google's public accessible fonts and having Web Squirrel give me everything I need to do it on my server. I can talk to the device to get info I need to deliver a pleasing layout with the @media queries. And when I need that old-timey newspaper look, there's multi-columns, but I fear it's a retro feature that will be better left alone due to the complexity it creates for the layout.
Surprisingly, I think the designer ended up with some of the best improvements. Colors are better defined both with more names and flexible opacity. The video and audio elements will have to wait for the patents to become less profitable while we find a common standard to work with. The dominance of the iPad will force me to encode a different way but I don't like it.
Businessman
If you want to know who is going to win the HTML5 battle, you just have to follow the money. And the hat in charge of the money is the businessman. This hat is the hardest to wear since it requires you to not think technically and focus on the customer. Does the customer really want what we think is geeky cool warez? Probably not.
I liked the idea of doing a survey of the currently used names for divs and classes in the wild in order to understand how people used HTML. But what were we supposed to do with that? Did I really want a better element because I was really happy with just calling my div a wrapper in the id and not a section. You want me to recode it? When?
What helps me make money? Coding faster. Reusing other people's code. If all you do is rename things, then it's going to get in my way. Now if you make it easier to find elements in CSS by adding better selectors, I'm not going to complain but it is looking more and more like a grep or regex language these days.
I can reuse other people's code if they've marked up what I want to use and now we're back to microformats because what I want is not generic text groupings that are or aren't related. What I want are finer granulation on the most common business entities which is exactly what the microformats do.
Other types of useful abstraction that will be faster or give me critical information are the new communcations APIs like Web Workers or Web Sockets and the ability to let me work offline with session or local storage when paired with the page caching. Geolocation is just a one-trick pony but had to happen when you start moving yourself around instead of sitting at the same IP day after day. And the database storage on the client will improve the user experience for offline as well.
Conclusion
People want a desktop application experience on the web and want it whenever they want it there. People have to have it easy and that means the developers as well as the users. So will I use the semantic markup? Probably. It will help me as a programmer. Will I use the <canvas> and other graphic elements? Probably not. I like SVG and JavaScript generated graphics as long as I don't have to write it. I can use Adobe Edge or other visual programs for that. Will I use the features that aren't well supported like drag & drop and datepickers where I can use jQuery and jQuery mobile to get standardization now? Obviously not.
The 2-D and 3-D graphics are incredible and not in my realm as a web developer but if you are a game developer that wants to leverage the e-commerce platforms of the future like the Apple App Store, Android Marketplace or possibly the Amazon juggernaut commerce system, then you must develop using <canvas> because it's the fastest and standardized.
As to why standards groups like the W3C and WHATWG don't move too fast, it's because you have four different groups of people all lobbying for their view. The DBA had the upper hand in the last version and now the designer and the engineer seem to be dominating. But like a real business, it's the dialog that is important to crafting a best solution for the whole. Let one company or one hat take over and it would be an impending fail.
As to why standards groups like the W3C and WHATWG don't move too fast, it's because you have four different groups of people all lobbying for their view. The DBA had the upper hand in the last version and now the designer and the engineer seem to be dominating. But like a real business, it's the dialog that is important to crafting a best solution for the whole. Let one company or one hat take over and it would be an impending fail.
The businessman is going to take you to that application experience that you so want. And he will charge you for it and pay you to develop great apps for it. The standards committees don't think like businessmen so you'll need to see what people are really using, really need, and get paid for. My best bet is to watch Google for how they use search data and to watch Amazon for how they will use their e-commerce platform. Of course, you'll also be watching Apple and Facebook as app delivery leaders. Then code for it and enjoy.
