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HTML Current Status

This page summarizes the relationships among specifications, whether they are finished standards or drafts. Below, each title links to the most recent version of a document. For related introductory information, see: Audio and Video, Browsers, Media Players, HTML & CSS, Scripting and Ajax.

Completed Work

W3C Recommendations have been reviewed by W3C Members, by software developers, and by other W3C groups and interested parties, and are endorsed by the Director as Web Standards. Learn more about the W3C Recommendation Track.

Group Notes are not standards and do not have the same level of W3C endorsement.

Standards

2010-11-23

XHTML™ Basic 1.1 - Second Edition

translations · errata

XHTML Basic 1.1 defines a profile of XHTML designed for small devices.

2010-11-23

XHTML™ 1.1 - Module-based XHTML - Second Edition

translations · errata

XHTML 1.1 redefines XHTML 1.0 based on a modular design, with support for Ruby Annotation.

2010-11-23

XHTML-Print - Second Edition

translations · errata

XHTML Print defines a profile of XHTML designed for printing from mobile devices to low-cost printers.

2008-10-14

RDFa in XHTML: Syntax and Processing

translations · errata

RDFa in XHTML allows to express structured data through mar kup attributes, based on an RDF modelling.

2003-01-09

Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 HTML Specification

translations · errata

DOM Level 2 HTML defines a programming interface to access and update the content and structure of HTML and XHTML documents.

2002-08-01

XHTML™ 1.0 The Extensible HyperText Markup Language (Second Edition)

errata

XHTML 1.0 is a reformulation of HTML 4 as an XML language.

2001-05-31

Ruby Annotation

translations · errata

"Ruby" are short runs of text alongside the base text, typically used in East Asian documents to indicate pronunciation or to provide a short annotation. This specification defines markup for ruby, in the form of an XHTML module.

1999-12-24

HTML 4.01 Specification

errata

HTML 4.01 defines the semantics and structure of HTML documents.

Group Notes

2010-12-16

XHTML Access Module

The XHTML Access module defines an element that, when used in conjunction with other XHTML modules in XHTML Family Markup Languages, enables a more robust accessibility model than is presently possible.

2010-12-16

HLink

The HLink module defined in this specification provides XHTML Family Members with the ability to specify which attributes of elements represent Hyperlinks, and how those hyperlinks should be traversed, and extends XLink use to a wider class of languages than those restricted to the syntactic style allowed by XLink.

2010-12-16

XFrames

XFrames is an XML application for composing documents together, replacing HTML Frames. By being a separate application from XHTML, it allows content negotiation to determine if the user agent accepts frames; by encoding the 'population' of frames in the URI, it allows framesets to be bookmarked.

2009-01-16

XHTML Media Types - Second Edition

XHTML Media Types recapitulates which media types can and should be used with the different flavors of XHTML, and under what conditions.

2008-05-30

Offline Web Applications

Offline Web Applications highlights the features in HTML 5 that address the challenge of building Web applications that work while offline.

2002-09-02

XHTML 1.0 in XML Schema

This document describes XML Schemas for XHTML 1.0.

2002-01-31

XHTML+SMIL Profile

The XHTML+SMIL profile defines a set of XHTML abstract modules that support a subset of the SMIL 2.0 specification.

Drafts

Below are draft documents: Candidate Recommendations, Last Call Drafts, other Working Drafts. Some of these may become Web Standards through the W3C Recommendation Track process. Others may be published as Group Notes or become obsolete specifications.

Candidate Recommendations

2011-12-08

Web Storage

This specification defines an API for persistent data storage of key-value pair data in Web clients.

2010-10-12

CSS Style Attributes

Describes the syntax and interpretation of the CSS fragment that can be used in "style" attributes inside mark-up, e.g., in HTML, SVG and MathML.

Last Call Drafts

2011-05-25

HTML5

This specification defines the 5th major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web: the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). In this version, new features are introduced to help Web application authors, new elements are introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention has been given to defining clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability.

2011-05-25

HTML+RDFa 1.1

This specification defines rules and guidelines for adapting the RDF in XHTML: Syntax and Processing (RDFa) specification for use in the HTML5 and XHTML5 members of the HTML family. The rules defined in this specification not only apply to HTML5 documents in non-XML and XML mode, but also to HTML4 and XHTML documents interpreted through the HTML5 parsing rules.

2011-05-25

HTML Microdata

This specification defines a mechanism for machine-readable data to be embedded in HTML documents in an easy-to-write manner, with an unambiguous parsing model. It is compatible with numerous other data formats including RDF and JSON.

2011-05-25

HTML Canvas 2D Context

Defines the flat cartesian surface that is the context for the canvas element (for drawing).

2011-05-25

Polyglot Markup: HTML-Compatible XHTML Documents

A document that uses polyglot markup is document that is a stream of bytes that parses into identical document trees (with the exception of the xmlns attribute on the root element) when processed as HTML and when processed as XML. Polyglot markup that meets a well defined set of constraints is interpreted as compatible, regardless of whether they are processed as HTML or as XHTML, per the HTML5 specification.

2011-05-25

HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives

This document contains author conformance requirements for use of the alt attribute in HTML5 and best practice guidance for authors of HTML documents on providing text alternatives for images.

Other Working Drafts

2012-01-12

HTML Data Guide

This guide aims to help publishers and consumers of HTML data use it well. With several syntaxes and vocabularies to choose from, it provides guidance about how to decide which meets the publisher's or consumer's needs. It discusses when it is necessary to mix syntaxes and vocabularies and how to publish and consume data that uses multiple formats. It describes how to create vocabularies that can be used in multiple syntaxes and general best practices about the publication and consumption of HTML data.

2012-01-12

Microdata to RDF

HTML microdata [MICRODATA] is an extension to HTML used to embed machine-readable data into HTML documents. Whereas the microdata specification describes a means of markup, the output format is JSON. This specification describes processing rules that may be used to extract RDF [RDF-CONCEPTS] from an HTML document containing microdata.

2012-01-03

Media Accessibility User Requirements

Aggregates requirements of a user with disabilities with respect to audio and video on the Web, providing background on user needs, alternative content technologies, and their application on the Web.

2011-12-15

RDFa Core 1.1

RDFa Core is a specification for attributes to express structured data in any markup language. The embedded data already available in the markup language (e.g., XHTML) is reused by the RDFa markup, so that publishers don't need to repeat significant data in the document content.

2011-12-15

XHTML+RDFa 1.1

RDFa Core 1.1 defines attributes and syntax for embedding semantic markup in Host Languages. This document defines one such Host Language. This language is a superset of XHTML 1.1, integrating the attributes as defined in RDFa Core 1.1.

2011-12-08

RDFa 1.1 Primer

HTML and RDFa (Resource Description Framework in Attributes) provides a set of markup attributes to augment visual information on the Web with machine-readable hints. In this Primer, we show how to express data using RDFa in HTML, and in particular how to mark up existing human-readable Web page content to express machine-readable data.

2011-12-08

RDFa Lite 1.1

RDFa Lite is a small subset of RDFa consisting of a few attributes that may be applied to most simple to moderate structured data markup tasks. While it is not a complete solution for advanced markup tasks, it does provide a good entry point for beginners.

2011-08-09

HTML5: Edition for Web Authors

This document is a strict subset of the HTML5 specification that omits user-agent (UA) implementation details. It is targeted toward Web authors and others who are not UA implementors and who want a view of the HTML specification that focuses more precisely on details relevant to using the HTML language to create Web documents and Web applications.

2011-05-25

HTML5 differences from HTML4

HTML 5 defines the fifth major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web, HTML. "HTML 5 differences from HTML 4" describes the differences between HTML 4 and HTML 5 and provides some of the rationale for the changes. This document may not provide accurate information as the HTML 5 specification is still actively in development. When in doubt, always check the HTML 5 specification itself. [HTML5]

2011-05-25

HTML: The Markup Language

This document describes the HTML markup language and provides details to help producers of HTML content create documents that conform to the language. It is not the normative specification but intended for authors.

2011-05-25

HTML to Platform Accessibility APIs Implementation Guide

This document maps HTML elements and attributes to accessibility API roles, states and properties on a variety of platforms.

2011-04-19

RDFa API

RDFa [RDFA-CORE] enables authors to publish structured information that is both human- and machine-readable. Concepts that have traditionally been difficult for machines to detect, like people, places, events, music, movies, and recipes, are now easily marked up in Web documents. While publishing this data is vital to the growth of Linked Data, using the information to improve the collective utility of the Web for humankind is the true goal. To accomplish this goal, it must be simple for Web developers to extract and utilize structured information from a Web document. This document details such a mechanism; an RDFa Application Programming Interface (RDFa API) that allows simple extraction and usage of structured information from a Web document.

2011-04-14

HTML Media Capture

This specification defines HTML form enhancements that provide access to the audio, image and video capture capabilities of the device.

2008-12-19

XForms for HTML

XForms for HTML provides a set of attributes and script methods that can be used by the tags or elements of an HTML or XHTML web page to simplify the integration of data-intensive interactive processing capabilities from XForms.

2007-11-26

HTML Design Principles

HTML 5 defines the fifth major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web, HTML. This document describes the set of guiding principles used by the HTML Working Group for the development of HTML5. The principles offer guidance for the design of HTML in the areas of compatibility, utility and interoperability.

Obsolete Specifications

These specifications have either been superseded by others, or have been abandoned. They remain available for archival purposes, but are not intended to be used.

Retired

2008-06-10

HTML 5 Publication Notes

HTML 5 Publication Notes is a companion document to the HTML 5 specification that gives more context about a given version of the drafts.

2002-08-09

An XHTML + MathML + SVG Profile

An XHTML+MathML+SVG profile is a profile that combines XHTML 1.1 [XHTML11], MathML 2.0 [MathML2] and SVG 1.1 [SVG11] together. This profile enables mixing XHTML, MathML and SVG in the same document using XML namespaces [XMLNS] mechanism, while allowing validation of such a mixed-namespace document. An XHTML 1.1 + MathML 2.0 + SVG 1.1 DTD driver is provided. An XHTML version of this document is conforming to this DTD.

2000-11-08

HTML Working Group Roadmap

This was used to document the HTML Working Group roadmap at some point of its history.

1999-09-06

XHTML™ Document Profile Requirements

This is a sample short description for this specification; over time we will replace this description with a real one.