W3C Says HTML5 Isn’t Ready for the Web

While companies from Google to Apple to Microsoft voice their ardent support for HTML5 and developers rush to show off the fun tricks it can do, those who actually oversee HTML5 are telling the world to cool their britches.

And today, “There is already a lot of excitement for HTML5, but it’s a little too early to deploy it because we’re running into interoperability issues.” Particularly when it comes to video content, different devices and different browsers aren’t handling HTML5 consistently.

“I don’t think it’s ready for production yet,” the official continued. “The real problem is can we make it work across browsers, and at the moment, that is not the case.”

HTML5, which was hatched by the non-W3C Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group in 2004, should be fully approved within two or three years; until then, officials say Flash and Silverlight are still going to remain approved and viable web technologies.

Regardless of these issues, however, HTML5 already has an incredible amount of momentum behind it. Not only has the spec received the aforementioned endorsements from big tech companies; its praises are being sung by developers who have used it to create beautiful and innovative web projects, as well.

We’re fairly uncertain that any developers will stop deploying HTML5 websites simply because W3C officials say the specification and APIs are still undergoing changes, and we’re equally certain that the same developers who are using HTML5 now will not be likely to want to develop with Flash/Silverlight or for older browsers such as IE6.