TwitterThis .net article, follows up on a blog post written by Adrian Roselli in which he rallies against the continued use of HTML5 as a global term for modern web technologies.
On speaking to .net, Roselli said that HTML5 “as a brand versus the name of the version of a particular specification” already causes confusion, not only with clients but also developers. “I suffered through this with DHTML and Web 2.0, and those weren’t even real specifications. I expect to continue to deal with it with HTML5.” He told us that new developers may not even be taught the differences, partly because the educators themselves don’t know.” As these devs come into the workforce and get direction from clients or non-technical supervisors to lean on HTML5 for a project, they may not understand that the marketing term ‘HTML5′ is just the latest variation on ‘DHTML’ or ‘Web 2.0′ and presume they are being directed to use one specification. They may spend far too much time rebuilding capability in script, or perhaps just failing at trying to address it, when a related specification already exists.”
I kind of agree in theory — confusing technical specs with buzzwords can make life difficult for developers in all sorts of ways — but I think this is just a difficultly we’re going to have to live with. I don’t think it’s too difficult, when speaking about the technical aspects of web technologies like HTML5, CSS3 et al, to explicitly make clear that we’re concerning ourselves with the specification of those technologies.
I have conversations with decision-makers on a fairly regular basis, who band around the phrase “HTML5″ to communicate what they’re anticipating for a project, and that’s fine with me. When it comes to actually sitting down to spec a particular project though, that’s when individual technologies are defined and ratified.
In the original post, Adrian states:
I am repeating a request that when we who know better (developers, tech writers, robots named Frank) speak about discrete specifications, we refer to them as such.
I agree with this. But here’s a question: what umbrella term should we use for these specifications? Modern web technologies do represent a major sea-change in the way we’re approaching things, and I feel we need a catch-all term to refer to them, for both technical and non-technical people. Some developers might have hated the terms DHTML and Web 2.0, but at least they gave us a common language which could be understood across disciplines; you could “get” the gist of what was being talked about.