HTML5 Compliance

I recently watched a video where someone was demoing HTML5 websites on an iPad.  The video is an eye-opener.  Steve Jobs wrote a letter claiming that HTML5 is the future, but more importantly it is the answer today if you want to produce sites with the type of interactive content typically found in sites employing Flash.

I did a little research wondering how long it would be until HTML5 was good-to-go.  You see, my grandfather was a business man and he was always offering great advice like, "Don't invest too early.  Be sure the your investment is a sound investment on a solid product before going 'all in'!" So naturally before I start recommending HTML5 to clients I want to be certain that HTML5 is solid as a technical approach.

The first public working draft of HTML5 was issued in January 22, 2008. The most recent meetup to work on the specification was April 7, 2010.  As someone who would first need to clearly understand the specification and employ development tools that help me to adhere to that specification before recommending it to my clients, I would hope that a full recommendation would be implemented before I start going to work on an HTML5 project.  Unfortunately, this is not the case.

In the comments to the April 7th meetup, people are asking the W3C to please implement a core HTML5 standard and bring in any new ideas as supplements later. This feels like a rush Job (fully intending the pun since it is Steve Jobs who is currently selling the idea that we should all switch from Flash to focus on HTML5 multimedia). The real question might be, would video and canvas be included in that core HTML5 implementation or would that be viewed as supplemental? Suddenly, in this context you can understand why Internet Explorer, the number 2 dominant browser in the world is reluctant to adopt a specification that isn't quite ready-for-prime-time.

The next step in my research was to examine any successful HTML5 examples that were supported by iDevices.  This got interesting quickly.

On the Apple website there is an entire page (I know... one entire page... lol!) devoted to making HTML5 site recommendations.  The one that caught my eye was the National Geographic website. Supposidely they are running HTML5 video.  Naturally, since this site is recommended by Apple I thought I would be able to benefit by learning from the code on the site.  This was very interesting.

As a seasoned web developer I can look through markup and gleen lessons from the people who created the page. But it seems to me that testing the page would be a much better approach.  I could more easily learn from their efforts if first I know I am looking at a good example, as recommended by Apple.  This was even more revealing.

Over at the W3C, even though the HTML5 specification isn't yet complete NOR IS IT A STANDARD they have a beta HTML5 testing  engine available.  Now, as compared to any other tester out there, I would trust the W3C before I would trust any other group including Apple.  I read an article recently that stated the fact that communications and media companies are reluctantly feeling obligated to start producing HTML5 content so that their clients can view their content on iDevices. If that is true then surely the companies recommended by Apple would be a part of that group.  Let's see how compliant the National Geographic homepage is then.

From this image you can see that the national geographic site is not anywhere close to being HTML5 compliant.  Click on the image in this paragraph to see all of the errors on just the homepage alone.

So why did Apple recommend it as a good example of HTML5-ready sites that deliver media for iDevices?  Hmmm. I thought Apple was all about supporting standards and yet this example doesn't seem to adhere to any of the HTML5 standards?  Maybe it is justa good example of implementing the video tag from HTML?  Let's click a video and have a look.

So I clicked on the image explaining that I could see video of turtles being born.  This link is the most predominant video reference on the homepage above-the-scroll.  In fact, there is an entire menu item called "movies" but this was a special call out so I clicked it.  What do I find then on the turtle video page? Hmmm.

A simple right mouse click on the player reveals that the National Geographic video player is made in Flash.  How interesting!  Maybe there is something unusual about this special turtle video.  So I clicked the "movies" menu item to inspect other movies available as I searched for the National Geographic HTML5 video player...

No such luck.  Still it seems that National Geographic is really all about delivering rich media content in Flash! But they did have a cool video over in the movie page linking to the U23D video.  Not surprisingly at all the entire U23D site is made ENTIRELY IN ADOBE FLASH!?  Oh well Apple.  You all might wonder, "Steve, Why are you holding Apple and Steve Jobs accountable for the HTML5 compliance or (missing) HTML5 video player on the National Geographic site?" and the answer is "Hey, Apple listed it as a good example!"

It really doesn't seem like HTML5 is ready for primetime, which led me to my last conclusion.

I don't believe that Apple or Steve Jobs really cares about standards or HTML5.  Didn't Steve Jobs just do a whole write up on his thoughts about Flash claiming that Flash isn't ready for mobile?  But haven't we all seen videos (like the one at the top of this page) showing that HTML5 isn't ready for mobile? Didn't symantec recently demonstrate that both Safari (94) and QuickTime (49) have more vulnerabilities than Flash (23) in 2009? If Safari and QuickTime are far more worse (by a factor of 2 or greater) in terms of vulnerability than Flash and HTML5 isn't really a standard at the admitting of the W3C and Flash is a standard for Rich Media and internet video... well, what is the deal Apple? It just can't be about a non-existant standard or vulnerability.

I think playing the "HTML5 card" is just a great stall mechanism keeping the world at bay imagining that it is OK to leave Flash off of iDevices.