The battle over HTML5 specifications—and who supports them best—is in full swing. Both Safari and Internet Explorer 9 are being held up as “shining examples” in this area. Competitors are angry.
Both Apple and Microsoft have cranked up the propaganda machine to show that they are “forward-looking champions” of open web standards. For example, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 team has developed no fewer than 192 tests for various HTML5, CSS3, SVG and DOM specifications.
IE9 best
Microsoft makes sure to note that the IE9 Platform Preview comes out on top of all browsers in these tests. In the HTML5 tests, IE9 is the only browser to achieve a 100 percent score.
That resounding result is being dismissed in some quarters as pure propaganda. First, Microsoft developed the tests itself, and second, the tests cover only a limited subset of the specifications. With a different premise, IE9 suddenly comes out worst in an ostensibly similar HTML5 test. This is due in part to the fact that IE9 does not support Canvas, only SVG.
And in a broader HTML5 test by Dutch developer Niels Leenheer, IE9 also sits at the bottom, alongside IE8.
Open yet exclusive
Apple is also creating a stir with a slick HTML5 “showcase,” a demonstration of “the power of open standards.” However, the demo can only be viewed in Apple’s own browser, Safari. But Apple reassures: “Soon other modern browsers will also be able to benefit from these web standards and their fantastic possibilities for web designers.”
The move stuck in the craw of competitors. “Most of those demos have nothing to do with HTML5. It looks like only the audio and video tag are used. And Apple uses browser sniffing to block other browsers,” Opera’s Haavard Moen blogs angrily.
Mike Shaver of Mozilla also criticizes the move: “Having trouble restraining my disdain for Apple’s arrogant and ridiculous HTML5 stance,” Shaver tweets. Haavard Moen concludes: “Browser makers should not hold evolving standards hostage for themselves.”
Tribal warfare
But that is exactly what is happening now. The uproar over the latest actions by Microsoft and Apple typifies the fierce tribal warfare raging over the HTML5 specifications. As long as these have not been definitively established by the W3C web consortium, there is heavy lobbying around these promising web standards.
There is also ongoing controversy about which video codec is best suited for playback with the HTML5 video tag. Apple and Microsoft back H.264, a modern and widely used codec for which royalties must be paid to MPEG LA, a group of patent holders. Mozilla and Opera therefore chose Ogg Theora, an open-source video codec that is of lower quality.
H.264, Theora or VP8
That battle has opened up even further with the introduction of WebM, a new open video standard based on the VP8 codec that Google has open-sourced. Mozilla and Opera immediately started working with WebM. Microsoft has indicated it will passively support VP8 in IE9; users must download the codec themselves. Apple has not yet commented on WebM.
Another example is the potential for offline functionality in browser applications through access to local databases. A schism is emerging between Web SQL and IndexedDB, although the latter appears to be gaining the upper hand.