HTML5 WG Working Drafts published

All six of the HTML5 Working Drafts have been published by the W3C HTML Working Group. The working drafts are the latest step forward in creating the future HTML5 standards. The core document is the HTML5 specification draft, which is accompanied by drafts of HTML5 differences from HTML4 and HTML: The Markup Language.

Also published are the working drafts for the recently contentious HTML+RDFa, HTML Microdata and HTML Canvas 2D Context specifications which cover embedded attribute data, embedded semantic metadata and 2D drawing and animation within HTML5. These elements of the proposed HTML5 standard were separated into their own documents to make the standard more modular.

Working drafts are the first step in the process of becoming a full W3C Recommendation. The drafts are published for review by the community and are the first incarnation of the proposed standards publicly available. Developers implementing these working drafts will have to be prepared to change their code in future as the drafts will be refined and revised before they become Candidate Recommendations.

Other announcements included the first "Call For Exclusions" on the HTML: The Markup Language draft, a process which aims to ensure that there are no royalty bearing patent claims on the future standard.

(djwm)