What WHATWG is, and why it’s actually pretty cool

I’ve had Edd Dumbill’s article on WHATWG open in my (saved by the grace Firefox’s Sessionsaver add-on) browser for a long time, but today I finally got around to reading it (as trivial as this may sound, the primary reason has probably been how intimidating and ugly IBM’s developerWorks is, followed by the repellentness of the WHATWG acronym).

I’m glad I finally did take a closer look at the article.

First of all:

“WHATWG’s figurehead specification is code-named HTML5, but is known more properly as Web Applications 1.0. HTML5 is intended to preserve backward compatibility with the current HTML standard, HTML 4.01, and also with XHTML 1.0, the XML version of HTML.”

And then:

So what’s inside HTML5? In short, a lot. The Web Applications 1.0 specification is an evolving beast, and some of the features mentioned are more fully developed than others. Here’s a 30,000-foot flyover of the new features:

  • New layout elements, including a calendar control, an address card, a flexible datagrid, gauges and progress meters, drag and drop, and menus
  • Programming extensions to the Document Object Model (DOM), including server-sent DOM events
  • A formalization of the de-facto standard XMLHttpRequest object, the centerpiece of Ajax communication
  • Dynamic bitmap graphics through the canvas element

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