HTML5 differences from HTML4
Editor's Draft 10 March 2010
- This Version:
- http://www.w3.org/TR/2010/ED-html5-diff-20100310/
- Latest Published Version:
- http://www.w3.org/TR/html5-diff/
- Latest Editor's Draft:
- http://dev.w3.org/html5/html4-differences/
- Previous Versions:
- http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-html5-diff-20090825/
- http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-html5-diff-20090423/
- http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-html5-diff-20090212/
- http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-html5-diff-20080610/
- http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/WD-html5-diff-20080122/
- http://www.w3.org/TR/2009/WD-html5-diff-20090423/
- Editor:
- Anne van Kesteren (Opera Software ASA) <annevk@opera.com>
Copyright © 2009 W3C® (MIT, ERCIM, Keio), All Rights Reserved. W3C liability, trademark and document use rules apply.
Abstract
HTML5 defines the fifth major revision of the core language of the World Wide Web, HTML. "HTML5 differences from HTML4" describes the differences between HTML4 and HTML5 and provides some of the rationale for the changes. This document may not provide accurate information as the HTML5 specification is still actively in development. When in doubt, always check the HTML5 specification itself. [HTML5]
Status of this Document
This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.
This is the 10 March 2010 Editor's Draft produced by the HTML Working Group, part of the HTML Activity. The Working Group intends to publish this document as a Working Group Note to accompany the HTML5 specification. The appropriate forum for comments is public-html-comments@w3.org, a mailing list with a public archive.
Publication as a Working Draft does not imply endorsement by the W3C Membership. This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress.
This document was produced by a group operating under the 5 February 2004 W3C Patent Policy. W3C maintains a public list of any patent disclosures made in connection with the deliverables of the group; that page also includes instructions for disclosing a patent. An individual who has actual knowledge of a patent which the individual believes contains Essential Claim(s) must disclose the information in accordance with section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
HTML has been in continuous evolution since it was introduced to the Internet in the early 1990s. Some features were introduced in specifications; others were introduced in software releases. In some respects, implementations and author practices have converged with each other and with specifications and standards, but in other ways, they continue to diverge.
HTML4 became a W3C Recommendation in 1997. While it continues to serve as a rough guide to many of the core features of HTML, it does not provide enough information to build implementations that interoperate with each other and, more importantly, with a critical mass of deployed content. The same goes for XHTML1, which defines an XML serialization for HTML4, and DOM Level 2 HTML, which defines JavaScript APIs for both HTML and XHTML. HTML5 will replace these documents. [DOM2HTML] [HTML4] [XHTML1]
The HTML5 draft reflects an effort, started in 2004, to study contemporary HTML implementations and deployed content. The draft:
- Defines a single language called HTML5 which can be written in HTML syntax and in XML syntax.
- Defines detailed processing models to foster interoperable implementations.
- Improves markup for documents.
- Introduces markup and APIs for emerging idioms, such as Web applications.
1.1. Open Issues
HTML5 is still a draft. The contents of HTML5, as well as the contents of this document which depend on HTML5, are still being discussed on the HTML Working Group and WHATWG mailing lists. The open issues include (this list is not exhaustive):
- De facto semantic definitions for some formerly presentational elements.
- Details of accessibility and media-independence features, such as the
alt
andsummary
attributes.
1.2. Backwards Compatible
HTML5 is defined in a way that it is backwards compatible with the way user agents handle deployed content. To keep the authoring language relatively simple for authors several elements and attributes are not included as outlined in the other sections of this document, such as presentational elements that are better dealt with using CSS.
User agents, however, will always have to support these older elements and attributes and this is why the specification clearly separates requirements for authors and user agents. This means that authors cannot use the isindex
or the plaintext
element, but user agents are required to support them in a way that is compatible with how these elements need to behave for compatibility with deployed content.
Since HTML5 has separate conformance requirements for authors and user agents there is no longer a need for marking features "deprecated".
1.3. Development Model
The HTML5 specification will not be considered finished before there are at least two complete implementations of the specification. This is a different approach than previous versions of HTML had. The goal is to ensure that the specification is implementable and usable by designers and developers once it is finished.
1.4. Impact on Web Architecture
The following areas / features defined in HTML5 are believed to impact the Web architecture:
- The use of the DOM as a basis for defining the language.
- The concept of browsing contexts.
- The distinction between user agent requirements and authoring requirements.
- The use of imperative definitions rather than abstract definitions with the requirement of black-box equivalence in implementations.
- The new content model concepts (replacing HTML4's block and inline concepts).
- The focus on accessibility as a built-in concept for new features (such as the
hidden
attribute, theprogress
element, et cetera) instead of an add-on (like thealt
attribute). - The focus on defining the semantics in detail (e.g. the outline algorithm, replacing the vague semantics in HTML4).
- The
menu
andcommand
elements. - The origin concept.
- Offline Web application caches.
- The definition of the browsing context "navigation" algorithm and the related session history traversal algorithms.
- The content-type sniffing and character encoding sniffing.
- The very explicit definition of a parser.
- The
contentEditable
feature and theUndoManager
feature. - The Drag and Drop and Copy and Paste architecture.
- The new sandboxing features for
iframe
.
2. Syntax
HTML5 defines an HTML syntax that is compatible with HTML4 and XHTML1 documents published on the Web, but is not compatible with the more esoteric SGML features of HTML4, such as processing instructions and shorthand markup. Documents using the HTML syntax are almost always served with the text/html
media type.
HTML5 also defines detailed parsing rules (including "error handling") for this syntax which are largely compatible with popular implementations. User agents must use these rules for resources that have the text/html
media type. Here is an example document that conforms to the HTML syntax:
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Example document</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Example paragraph</p>
</body>
</html>
HTML5 also defines a text/html-sandboxed
media type for documents using the HTML syntax. This can be used when hosting untrusted content.
The other syntax that can be used for HTML5 is XML. This syntax is compatible with XHTML1 documents and implementations. Documents using this syntax need to be served with an XML media type and elements need to be put in the http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml
namespace following the rules set forth by the XML specifications. [XML]
Below is an example document that conforms to the XML syntax of HTML5. Note that XML documents must have an XML media type such as application/xhtml+xml
or application/xml
.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Example document</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Example paragraph</p>
</body>
</html>
2.1. Character Encoding
For the HTML syntax of HTML5 authors have three means of setting the character encoding:
- At the transport level. By using the HTTP
Content-Type
header for instance. - Using a Unicode Byte Order Mark (BOM) character at the start of the file. This character provides a signature for the encoding used.
- Using a
meta
element with acharset
attribute that specifies the encoding within the first 512 bytes of the document. E.g.<meta charset="UTF-8">
could be used to specify the UTF-8 encoding. This replaces the need for<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
although that syntax is still allowed.
For the XML syntax, authors have to use the rules as set forth in the XML specifications to set the character encoding.
2.2. The DOCTYPE
The HTML syntax of HTML5 requires a DOCTYPE to be specified to ensure that the browser renders the page in standards mode. The DOCTYPE has no other purpose and is therefore optional for XML. Documents with an XML media type are always handled in standards mode. [DOCTYPE]
The DOCTYPE declaration is <!DOCTYPE html>
and is case-insensitive in the HTML syntax. DOCTYPEs from earlier versions of HTML were longer because the HTML language was SGML-based and therefore required a reference to a DTD. With HTML5 this is no longer the case and the DOCTYPE is only needed to enable standards mode for documents written using the HTML syntax. Browsers already do this for <!DOCTYPE html>
.
2.3. MathML and SVG
The HTML syntax of HTML5 allows for MathML and SVG elements to be used inside a document. E.g. a very simple document using some of the minimal syntax features could look like:
<!doctype html>
<title>SVG in text/html</title>
<p>
A green circle:
<svg> <circle r="50" cx="50" cy="50" fill="green"/> </svg>
</p>
More complex combinations are also possible. E.g. with the SVG foreignObject
element you could nest MathML, HTML, or both inside an SVG fragment that is itself inside HTML.
2.4. Miscellaneous
There are a few other syntax changes worthy of mentioning:
- HTML now has native support for IRIs, though they can only be fully used if the document encoding is UTF-8 or UTF-16.
- The
lang
attribute takes the empty string in addition to a valid language identifier, just likexml:lang
does in XML.
3. Language
This section is split up in several subsections to more clearly illustrate the various differences there are between HTML4 and HTML5.
3.1. New Elements
The links in this section may stop working if elements are renamed and/or removed. They should function in the latest version of this draft.
The following elements have been introduced for better structure:
-
section
represents a generic document or application section. It can be used together with theh1
,h2
,h3
,h4
,h5
, andh6
elements to indicate the document structure. -
article
represents an independent piece of content of a document, such as a blog entry or newspaper article. -
aside
represents a piece of content that is only slightly related to the rest of the page. -
hgroup
represents the header of a section. -
header
represents a group of introductory or navigational aids. -
footer
represents a footer for a section and can contain information about the author, copyright information, et cetera. -
nav
represents a section of the document intended for navigation. -
figure
can be used to associate a caption together with some embedded content, such as a graphic or video:<figure> <video src="ogg"></video> <figcaption>Example</figcaption> </figure>
figcaption
provides the caption.
Then there are several other new elements:
-
video
andaudio
for multimedia content. Both provide an API so application authors can script their own user interface, but there is also a way to trigger a user interface provided by the user agent.source
elements are used together with these elements if there are multiple streams available of different types. -
embed
is used for plugin content. -
mark
represents a run of marked text. -
progress
represents a completion of a task, such as downloading or when performing a series of expensive operations. -
meter
represents a measurement, such as disk usage. -
time
represents a date and/or time. -
canvas
is used for rendering dynamic bitmap graphics on the fly, such as graphs or games. -
command
represents a command the user can invoke. -
details
represents additional information or controls which the user can obtain on demand. Thesummary
element provides its summary, legend, or caption. -
datalist
together with the a newlist
attribute forinput
can be used to make comboboxes:<input list="browsers"> <datalist id="browsers"> <option value="Safari"> <option value="Internet Explorer"> <option value="Opera"> <option value="Firefox"> </datalist>
-
keygen
represents control for key pair generation. -
output
represents some type of output, such as from a calculation done through scripting.
The input
element's type
attribute now has the following new values:
The idea of these new types is that the user agent can provide the user interface, such as a calendar date picker or integration with the user's address book, and submit a defined format to the server. It gives the user a better experience as his input is checked before sending it to the server meaning there is less time to wait for feedback.
3.2. New Attributes
HTML5 has introduced several new attributes to various elements that were already part of HTML4:
-
The
a
andarea
elements now have amedia
attribute for consistency with thelink
element. It is purely advisory. -
The
a
andarea
elements have a new attribute calledping
that specifies a space-separated list of URLs which have to be pinged when the hyperlink is followed. Currently user tracking is mostly done through redirects. This attribute allows the user agent to inform users which URLs are going to be pinged as well as giving privacy-conscious users a way to turn it off. -
The
area
element, for consistency with thea
andlink
elements, now also has thehreflang
andrel
attributes. -
The
base
element can now have atarget
attribute as well, mainly for consistency with thea
element. (This is already widely supported.) Also, thetarget
attribute for thea
andarea
elements is no longer deprecated, as it is useful in Web applications, e.g. in conjunction withiframe
. -
The
value
attribute for theli
element is no longer deprecated as it is not presentational. The same goes for thestart
attribute of theol
element. -
The
meta
element has acharset
attribute now as this was already widely supported and provides a nice way to specify the character encoding for the document. -
A new
autofocus
attribute can be specified on theinput
(except when thetype
attribute ishidden
),select
,textarea
andbutton
elements. It provides a declarative way to focus a form control during page load. Using this feature should enhance the user experience as the user can turn it off if he does not like it, for instance. -
A new
placeholder
attribute can be specified on theinput
andtextarea
elements. -
The new
form
attribute forinput
,output
,select
,textarea
,button
andfieldset
elements allows for controls to be associated with a form. I.e. these elements can now be placed anywhere on a page, not just as descendants of theform
element. -
The new
required
attribute applies toinput
(except when thetype
attribute ishidden
,image
or some button type such assubmit
) andtextarea
. It indicates that the user has to fill in a value in order to submit the form. -
The
fieldset
element now allows thedisabled
attribute disabling all its contents when specified. -
The
input
element has several new attributes to specify constraints:autocomplete
,min
,max
,multiple
,pattern
andstep
. As mentioned before it also has a newlist
attribute which can be used together with thedatalist
element. -
The
form
element has anovalidate
attribute that can be used to disable form validation submission (i.e. the form can always be submitted). -
The
input
andbutton
elements haveformaction
,formenctype
,formmethod
,formnovalidate
, andformtarget
as new attributes. If present, they override theaction
,enctype
,method
,novalidate
, andtarget
attributes on theform
element. -
The
menu
element has two new attributes:type
andlabel
. They allow the element to transform into a menu as found in typical user interfaces as well as providing for context menus in conjunction with the globalcontextmenu
attribute. -
The
style
element has a newscoped
attribute which can be used to enable scoped style sheets. Style rules within such astyle
element only apply to the local tree. -
The
script
element has a new attribute calledasync
that influences script loading and execution. -
The
html
element has a new attribute calledmanifest
that points to an application cache manifest used in conjunction with the API for offline Web applications. -
The
link
element has a new attribute calledsizes
. It can be used in conjunction with theicon
relationship (set through therel
attribute) to indicate the size of the referenced icon. -
The
ol
element has a new attribute calledreversed
to indicate that the list order is descending when present. -
The
iframe
element has three new attributes calledsandbox
,seamless
, andsrcdoc
which allow for sandboxing content, e.g. blog comments.
Several attributes from HTML4 now apply to all elements. These are called global attributes: class
, dir
, id
, lang
, style
, tabindex
and title
.
There are also several new global attributes:
- The
contenteditable
attribute indicates that the element is an editable area. The user can change the contents of the element and manipulate the markup. - The
contextmenu
attribute can be used to point to a context menu provided by the author. - The
data-*
collection of author-defined attributes. Authors can define any attribute they want as long as they prefix it withdata-
to avoid clashes with future versions of HTML. The only requirement on these attributes is that they are not used for user agent extensions. - The
draggable
attribute can be used together with the new drag & drop API. - The
hidden
attribute indicates that an element is not yet, or is no longer, relevant. - The
role
andaria-*
collection attributes which can be used to instruct assistive technology. - The
spellcheck
attribute allows for hinting whether content can be checked for spelling or not.
HTML5 also makes all event handler attributes from HTML4 that take the form onevent-name
global attributes and adds several new event handler attributes for new events it defines, such as the play
event which is used by the API for the media elements, video
and audio
.
3.3. Changed Elements
These elements have slightly modified meanings in HTML5 to better reflect how they are used on the Web or to make them more useful:
-
The
a
element without anhref
attribute now represents a "placeholder link". It can also contain flow content rather than being restricted to phrase content. -
The
address
element is now scoped by the new concept of sectioning. -
The
b
element now represents a span of text to be stylistically offset from the normal prose without conveying any extra importance, such as keywords in a document abstract, product names in a review, or other spans of text whose typical typographic presentation is emboldened. -
The
cite
element now solely represents the title of a work (e.g. a book, a paper, an essay, a poem, a score, a song, a script, a film, a TV show, a game, a sculpture, a painting, a theatre production, a play, an opera, a musical, an exhibition, a legal case report, etc). Specifically the example in HTML4 where it is used to mark up the name of a person is no longer considered conforming. -
The
hr
element now represents a paragraph-level thematic break. -
The
i
element now represents a span of text in an alternate voice or mood, or otherwise offset from the normal prose, such as a taxonomic designation, a technical term, an idiomatic phrase from another language, a thought, a ship name, or some other prose whose typical typographic presentation is italicized. Usage varies widely by language. -
For the
label
element the browser should no longer move focus from the label to the control unless such behavior is standard for the underlying platform user interface. -
The
menu
element is redefined to be useful for toolbars and context menus. -
The
small
element now represents small print (for side comments and legal print). -
The
strong
element now represents importance rather than strong emphasis.
3.4. Changed attributes
The following attributes are allowed but authors are strongly encouraged to not use them and instead use an alternative solution:
-
The
border
attribute onimg
. It is required to have the value "0
" when present. Authors can use CSS instead. -
The
language
attribute onscript
. It is required to have the value "JavaScript
" (case-insensitive) when present and cannot conflict with thetype
attribute. Authors can simply omit it as it has no useful function. -
The
name
attribute ona
. Authors can use theid
attribute instead. -
The
summary
attribute ontable
. The HTML5 draft defines several alternative solutions.
3.5. Absent Elements
The elements in this section are not to be used by authors. User agents will still have to support them and various sections in HTML5 define how. E.g. the obsolete isindex
element is handled by the parser section.
The following elements are not in HTML5 because their effect is purely presentational and their function is better handled by CSS:
basefont
big
center
font
s
strike
tt
u
The following elements are not in HTML5 because their usage affected usability and accessibility for the end user in a negative way:
frame
frameset
noframes
The following elements are not included because they have not been used often, created confusion, or their function can be handled by other elements:
acronym
is not included because it has created a lot of confusion. Authors are to useabbr
for abbreviations.applet
has been obsoleted in favor ofobject
.isindex
usage can be replaced by usage of form controls.dir
has been obsoleted in favor oful
.
Finally the noscript
is only conforming in the HTML syntax. It is not included in the XML syntax as its usage relies on an HTML parser.
3.6. Absent Attributes
Some attributes from HTML4 are no longer allowed in HTML5. If they need to have any impact on user agents for compatibility reasons it is defined how they should work in those scenarios.
rev
andcharset
attributes onlink
anda
.shape
andcoords
attributes ona
.longdesc
attribute onimg
andiframe
.target
attribute onlink
.nohref
attribute onarea
.profile
attribute onhead
.version
attribute onhtml
.name
attribute onimg
(useid
instead).scheme
attribute onmeta
.archive
,classid
,codebase
,codetype
,declare
andstandby
attributes onobject
.valuetype
andtype
attributes onparam
.axis
andabbr
attributes ontd
andth
.scope
attribute ontd
.
In addition, HTML5 has none of the presentational attributes that were in HTML4 as their functions are better handled by CSS:
align
attribute oncaption
,iframe
,img
,input
,object
,legend
,table
,hr
,div
,h1
,h2
,h3
,h4
,h5
,h6
,p
,col
,colgroup
,tbody
,td
,tfoot
,th
,thead
andtr
.alink
,link
,text
andvlink
attributes onbody
.background
attribute onbody
.bgcolor
attribute ontable
,tr
,td
,th
andbody
.border
attribute ontable
andobject
.cellpadding
andcellspacing
attributes ontable
.char
andcharoff
attributes oncol
,colgroup
,tbody
,td
,tfoot
,th
,thead
andtr
.clear
attribute onbr
.compact
attribute ondl
,menu
,ol
andul
.frame
attribute ontable
.frameborder
attribute oniframe
.height
attribute ontd
andth
.hspace
andvspace
attributes onimg
andobject
.marginheight
andmarginwidth
attributes oniframe
.noshade
attribute onhr
.nowrap
attribute ontd
andth
.rules
attribute ontable
.scrolling
attribute oniframe
.size
attribute onhr
.type
attribute onli
,ol
andul
.valign
attribute oncol
,colgroup
,tbody
,td
,tfoot
,th
,thead
andtr
.width
attribute onhr
,table
,td
,th
,col
,colgroup
andpre
.
4. APIs
HTML5 introduces a number of APIs that help in creating Web applications. These can be used together with the new elements introduced for applications:
- API for playing of video and audio which can be used with the new
video
andaudio
elements. - An API that enables offline Web applications.
- An API that allows a Web application to register itself for certain protocols or media types.
- Editing API in combination with a new global
contenteditable
attribute. - Drag & drop API in combination with a
draggable
attribute. - API that exposes the history and allows pages to add to it to prevent breaking the back button.
4.1. Extensions to HTMLDocument
HTML5 has extended the HTMLDocument
interface from DOM Level 2 HTML in a number of ways. The interface is now implemented on all objects implementing the Document
interface so it stays meaningful in a compound document context. It also has several noteworthy new members:
-
getElementsByClassName()
to select elements by their class name. The way this method is defined will allow it to work for any content withclass
attributes and aDocument
object such as SVG and MathML. -
innerHTML
as an easy way to parse and serialize an HTML or XML document. This attribute was previously only available onHTMLElement
in Web browsers and not part of any standard. -
activeElement
andhasFocus
to determine which element is currently focused and whether theDocument
has focus respectively. -
getSelection()
which returns an object that represents the current selection(s).
4.2. Extensions to HTMLElement
The HTMLElement
interface has also gained several extensions in HTML5:
-
getElementsByClassName()
which is basically a scoped version of the one found onHTMLDocument
. -
innerHTML
as found in Web browsers today. It is also defined to work in XML context (when it is used in an XML document). -
classList
is a convenient accessor forclassName
. The object it returns exposes methods,contains()
,add()
,remove()
andtoggle()
, for manipulating the element's classes. Thea
,area
andlink
elements have a similar attribute calledrelList
that provides the same functionality for therel
attribute.
5. HTML5 Changelogs
The changelogs in this section indicate what has been changed between publications of the HTML5 drafts. Rationale for changes can be found in the public-html@w3.org
and whatwg@whatwg.org
mailing list archives and to some extent in the This Week in HTML5 series of blog posts. Many editorial and minor technical changes are not included in these changelogs. I.e. implementors are strongly encouraged to follow the development of the main specification on a frequent basis so they become aware of all changes that affect them early on.
The changes in the changelogs are in rough chronological order to ease editing this document.
5.1. Changes since 25 August 2009
- The
dialog
element has been removed. A section with advice on how to mark up conversations has effectively replaced it. document.head
has been introduced to provide convenient access to thehead
element from script.- The link type
feed
has been removed.alternate
with specific media types is to be used instead. createHTMLDocument()
has been introduced as API to allow easy creation of HTML documents.- Both the
meter
andprogress
elements no longer have "magic" processing of their contents because it could not be made to work internationally. - The
meter
andprogress
elements, as well as theoutput
element, can now be labeled using thelabel
element. - A new media type,
text/html-sandboxed
, was introduced to allow hosting of potentially hostile content without it causing harm. - A
srcdoc
attribute for theiframe
element was introduced to allow embedding of potentially hostile content inline. It is expected to be used together with thesandbox
andseamless
attributes. - The
figure
element now uses a new elementfigcaption
rather thanlegend
because people want to use HTML5 long before it reaches W3C Recommendation. - The
details
element now uses a new elementsummary
for exactly the same reason. - The
autobuffer
attribute on media elements was renamed topreload
.
A whole lot of other smaller issues have also been resolved. The above list summarises what is thought to be of primary interest to authors.
In addition to all of the above, Microdata, the 2D context API for canvas
, and Web Messaging (postMessage()
API) have been split into their own drafts at the W3C (the WHATWG still publishes a version of HTML5 that includes them):
Specific microdata vocabularies are gone altogether in the W3C draft of HTML5 and are not published as a separate draft. The WHATWG draft of HTML5 still includes them.
5.2. Changes from 23 April 2009 to 25 August 2009
- When the
time
element is empty user agents have to render the time in a locale-specific manner. - The
load
event is dispatched atWindow
, but now hasDocument
as its target. pushState()
now affects theReferer
(sic) header.onundo
andonredo
are now onWindow
.- Media elements now have a
startTime
member that indicates where the current resource starts. header
has been renamed tohgroup
and a newheader
element has been introduced.createImageData()
now also takesImageData
objects.createPattern()
can now take avideo
element as argument too.- The
footer
element is no longer allowed inheader
andheader
is not allowed inaddress
orfooter
. - A new control has been introduced:
<input type="tel">
- The Command API now works for all elements.
accesskey
is now properly defined.section
andarticle
now take acite
attribute.- A new feature called Microdata has been introduced which allows people to embed custom data structures in their HTML documents.
- Using the Microdata model three predefined vocabularies have also been included: vCard, vEvent, and a model for licensing.
- Drag and drop has been updated to work with the Microdata model.
- The last of the parsing quirks has been defined.
textLength
has been added as member of thetextarea
element.- The
rp
element now takes phrasing content rather than a single character. location.reload()
is now defined.- The
hashchange
event now fires asynchronously. - Rules for compatibility with XPath 1.0 and XSLT 1.0 have been added.
- The
spellcheck
IDL attribute now maps to aDOMString
. hasFeature()
support has been reduced to a minimum.- The
Audio()
constructor sets theautobuffer
attribute. - The
td
element is no longer allowed inthead
. - The
input
element andDataTransfer
object now have afiles
IDL attribute. - The
datagrid
andbb
have been removed due to their design not being agreed upon. - The cue range API has been removed from the media elements.
- Support for WAI-ARIA has been integrated.
On top of this list quite a few minor clarifications, typos, issues specific to implementors, and other small problems have been resolved.
In addition, the following parts of HTML5 have been taken out and will likely be further developed at the IETF:
- Definition of URLs.
- Definition of Content-Type sniffing.
5.3. Changes from 12 February 2009 to 23 April 2009
- A new global attribute called
spellcheck
has been added. - Defined that ECMAScript
this
in the global object returns aWindowProxy
object rather than theWindow
object. - The
value
IDL attribute forinput
elements in the File Upload state is now defined. - Definition of
designMode
was changed to be more in line with legacy implementations. - The
drawImage()
method of the 2D drawing API can now take avideo
element as well. - The way media elements load resources has been changed.
document.domain
is now IPv6-compatible.- The
video
element gained anautobuffer
boolean attribute that serves as a hint. - You are now allowed to specify the
meta
element with acharset
attribute in XML documents if the value of that attribute matches the encoding of the document. (Note that it does not specify the value, it is just a talisman.) - The
bufferingRate
andbufferingThrottled
members of media elements have been removed. - The media element resource selection algorithm is now asynchronous.
- The
postMessage()
API now takes an array ofMessagePort
objects rather than just one. - The second argument of the
add()
method on theselect
element and theoptions
member of theselect
element is now optional. - The
action
,enctype
,method
,novalidate
, andtarget
attributes oninput
andbutton
elements have been renamed toformaction
,formenctype
,formmethod
,formnovalidate
, andformtarget
. - A "storage mutex" concept has been added to deal with separate pages trying to change a storage object (
document.cookie
andlocalStorage
) at the same time. TheNavigator
gained agetStorageUpdates()
method to allow it to be explicitly released. - A syntax for SVG similar to MathML is now defined so that SVG can be included in
text/html
resources. - The
placeholder
attribute has been added to thetextarea
element. - Added a
keygen
element for key pair generation. - The
datagrid
element was revised to make the API more asynchronous and allow for unloaded parts of the grid.
In addition, several parts of HTML5 have been taken out and will be further developed by the Web Applications Working Group as standalone specifications:
- WebSocket API
- WebSocket protocol
- Server-Sent Events
- Web Storage (
localStorage
andsessionStorage
) - Web SQL Database
5.4. Changes from 10 June 2008 to 12 February 2009
- The
data
member ofImageData
objects has been changed from an array to aCanvasPixelArray
object. - Shadows are now required from implementations of the
canvas
element and its API. - Security model for
canvas
is clarified. - Various changes to the processing model of
canvas
have been made in response to implementation and author feedback. E.g. clarifying what happens when NaN and Infinity are passed and fixing the definitions ofarc()
andarcTo()
. innerHTML
in XML was slightly changed to improve round-tripping.- The
toDataURL()
method on thecanvas
element now supports setting a quality level when the media type argument isimage/jpeg
. - The
poster
attribute of thevideo
element now affects its intrinsic dimensions. - The behavior of the
type
attribute of thelink
element has been clarified. - Sniffing is now allowed for
link
when the expected type is an image. - A section on URLs is introduced dealing with how URL values are to be interpreted and what exactly authors are required to do. Every feature of the specification that uses URLs has been reworded to take the new URL section into account.
- It is now explicit that the
href
attribute of thebase
element does not depend onxml:base
. - It is now defined what the behavior should be when the base URL changes.
- URL decomposition IDL attributes are now more aligned with Internet Explorer.
- The
xmlns
attribute with the valuehttp://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml
is now allowed on all HTML elements. data-*
attributes and custom attributes on theembed
element now have to match the XMLName
production and cannot contain a colon.- WebSocket API is introduced for bidirectional communication with a server.
- The default value of
volume
on media elements is now 1.0 rather than 0.5. event-source
was renamed toeventsource
because no other HTML element uses a hyphen.- A message channel API has been introduced augmenting
postMessage()
. - A new element named
bb
has been added. It represents a user agent command that the user can invoke. - The
addCueRange()
method on media elements has been modified to take an identifier which is exposed in the callbacks. - It is now defined how to mutate a DOM into an infoset.
- The
parent
attribute of theWindow
object is now defined. - The
embed
element is defined to do extension sniffing for compatibilty with servers that deliver Flash astext/plain
. (This is marked as an issue in the specification to figure out if there is a better way to make this work.) - The
embed
can now be used without itssrc
attribute. getElementsByClassName()
is defined to be ASCII case-insensitive in quirks mode for consistency with CSS.- In HTML documents
localName
no longer returns the node name in uppercase. data-*
attributes are defined to be always lowercase.- The
opener
attribute of theWindow
object is not to be present when the page was opened from a link withtarget="_blank"
andrel="noreferrer"
. - The
top
attribute of theWindow
object is now defined. - The
a
element now allows nested flow content, but not nested interactive content. - It is now defined what the
header
element means to document summaries and table of contents. - What it means to fetch a resource is now defined.
- Patterns are now required for the
canvas
element. - The
autosubmit
attribute has been removed from themenu
element. - Support for
outerHTML
andinsertAdjacentHTML()
has been added. xml:lang
is now allowed in HTML whenlang
is also specified and they have the same value. In XMLlang
is allowed ifxml:lang
is also specified and they have the same value.- The
frameElement
attribute of theWindow
object is now defined. - An event loop and task queue is now defined detailing script execution and events. All features have been updated to be defined in terms of this mechanism.
- If the
alt
attribute is omitted atitle
attribute, an enclosingfigure
element with alegend
element descendant, or an enclosing section with an associated heading must be present. - The
irrelevant
attribute has been renamed tohidden
. - The
definitionURL
attribute of MathML is now properly supported. Previously it would have ended up being all lowercase during parsing. - User agents must treat US-ASCII as Windows-1252 for compatibility reasons.
- An alternative syntax for the DOCTYPE is allowed for compatibility with some XML tools.
- Data templates have been removed (consisted of the
datatemplate
,rule
andnest
elements). - The media elements now support just a single
loop
attribute. - The
load()
method on media elements has been redefined as asynchronous. It also tries out files in turn now rather than just looking at thetype
attribute of thesource
element. - A new member called
canPlayType()
has been added to the media elements. - The
totalBytes
andbufferedBytes
attributes have been removed from the media elements. - The
Location
object gained aresolveURL()
method. - The
q
element has changed again. Punctation is to be provided by the user agent again. - Various changes were made to the HTML parser algorithm to be more in line with the behavior Web sites require.
- The
unload
andbeforeunload
events are now defined. - The IDL blocks in the specification have been revamped to be in line with the upcoming Web IDL specification.
- Table headers can now have headers. User agents are required to support a
headers
attribute pointing to atd
orth
element, but authors are required to only let them point toth
elements. - Interested parties can now register new
http-equiv
values. - When the
meta
element has acharset
attribute it must occur within the first 512 bytes. - The
StorageEvent
object now has astorageArea
attribute. - It is now defined how HTML is to be used within the SVG
foreignObject
element. - The notification API has been dropped.
- How [[Get]] works for the
HTMLDocument
andWindow
objects is now defined. - The
Window
object gained thelocationbar
,menubar
,personalbar
,scrollbars
,statusbar
andtoolbar
attributes giving information about the user interface. - The application cache section has been significantly revised and updated.
document.domain
now relies on the Public Suffix List. [PSL]- A non-normative rendering section has been added that describes user agent rendering rules for both obsolete and conforming elements.
- A normative section has been added that defines when certain selectors as defined in the Selectors and the CSS3 Basic User Interface Module match HTML elements. [SELECTORS] [CSS-UI]
Web Forms 2.0, previously a standalone specification, has been fully integrated into HTML5 since last publication. The following changes were made to the forms chapter:
- Support for XML submission has been removed.
- Support for form filling has been removed.
- Support for filling of the
select
anddatalist
elements through thedata
attribute has been removed. - Support for associating a field with multiple forms has been removed. A field can still be associated with a form it is not nested in through the
form
attribute. - The
dispatchChangeInput()
anddispatchFormChange()
methods have been removed from theselect
,input
,textarea
, andbutton
elements. - Repetition templates have been removed.
- The
inputmode
attribute has been removed. - The
input
element in the File Upload state no longer supports themin
andmax
attributes. - The
allow
attribute oninput
elements in the File Upload state is no longer authoritative. - The
pattern
andaccept
attributes fortextarea
have been removed. - RFC 3106 is no longer explicitly supported.
- The
submit()
method now just submits, it no longer ensures the form controls are valid. - The
input
element in the Range state now defaults to the middle, rather than the minimum value. - The
size
attribute on theinput
element is now conforming (rather than deprecated). object
elements now partake in form submission.- The
type
attribute of theinput
element gained the valuescolor
andsearch
. - The
input
element gained amultiple
attribute which allows for either multiple e-mails or multiple files to be uploaded depending on the value of thetype
attribute. - The
input
,button
andform
elements now have anovalidate
attribute to indicate that the form fields should not be required to have valid values upon submission. - When the
label
element contains aninput
it may still have afor
attribute as long as it points to theinput
element it contains. - The
input
element now has anindeterminate
IDL attribute. - The
input
element gained aplaceholder
attribute.
5.5. Changes from 22 January 2008 to 10 June 2008
- Implementation and authoring details around the
ping
attribute have changed. <meta http-equiv=content-type>
is now a conforming way to set the character encoding.- API for the
canvas
element has been cleaned up. Text support has been added. globalStorage
is now restricted to the same-origin policy and renamed tolocalStorage
. Related event dispatching has been clarified.postMessage()
API changed. only the origin of the message is exposed, no longer the URL. It also requires a second argument that indicates the origin of the target document.- Drag and drop API has got clarification. The
dataTransfer
object now has atypes
attribute indicating the type of data being transferred. - The
m
element is now calledmark
. - Server-sent events has changed and gotten clarification. It uses a new format so that older implementations are not broken.
- The
figure
element no longer requires a caption. - The
ol
element has a newreversed
attribute. - Character encoding detection has changed in response to feedback.
- Various changes have been made to the HTML parser section in response to implementation feedback.
- Various changes to the editing section have been made, including adding
queryCommandEnabled()
and related methods. - The
headers
attribute has been added fortd
elements. - The
table
element has a newcreateTBody()
method. - MathML support has been added to the HTML parser section. (SVG support is still awaiting input from the SVG WG.)
- Author-defined attributes have been added. Authors can add attributes to elements in the form of
data-name
and can access these through the DOM usingdataset[name]
on the element in question. - The
q
element has changed to require punctation inside rather than having the browser render it. - The
target
attribute can now have the value_blank
. - The
showModalDialog
API has been added. - The
document.domain
API has been defined. - The
source
element now has a newpixelratio
attribute useful for videos that have some kind encoding error. bufferedBytes
,totalBytes
andbufferingThrottled
IDL attributes have been added to thevideo
element.- Media
begin
event has been renamed toloadstart
for consistency with the Progress Events specification. charset
attribute has been added toscript
.- The
iframe
element has gained thesandbox
andseamless
attributes which provide sandboxing functionality. - The
ruby
,rt
andrp
elements have been added to support ruby annotation. - A
showNotification()
method has been added to show notification messages to the user. - Support for
beforeprint
andafterprint
events has been added.
Acknowledgments
The editor would like to thank Ben Millard, Cameron McCormack, Charles McCathieNevile, Dan Connolly, David Håsäther, Dennis German, Frank Ellermann, Frank Palinkas, Gordon P. Hemsley, Henri Sivonen, James Graham, Jens Meiert, Jürgen Jeka, Krijn Hoetmer, Maciej Stachowiak, Mark Pilgrim, Martijn Wargers, Martyn Haigh, Masataka Yakura, Michael Smith, Olivier Gendrin, Øistein E. Andersen, Philip Taylor, Simon Pieters, and Yngve Spjeld Landro for their contributions to this document as well as to all the people who have contributed to HTML5 over the years for improving the Web!
References
- [CSS-UI]
- CSS3 Basic User Interface Module, T. Çelik, editor. W3C.
- [DOCTYPE]
- Activating Browser Modes with Doctype, H. Sivonen.
- [DOM2HTML]
- Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 HTML Specification, J. Stenback, P. Le Hégaret, A. Le Hors, editors. W3C.
- [HTML4]
- HTML 4.01 Specification, D. Raggett, A. Le Hors, I. Jacobs, editors. W3C.
- [HTML5]
- HTML5, I. Hickson, D. Hyatt, editors. W3C.
- HTML5 (editor's draft), I. Hickson, editor. WHATWG.
- HTML5 (editors' draft), I. Hickson, D. Hyatt, editors. W3C.
- HTML5 (editor's draft), I. Hickson, editor. WHATWG.
- [PSL]
- Public Suffix List, Mozilla Foundation.
- [SELECTORS]
- Selectors, D. Glazman, T. Çelik, I. Hickson, editors. W3C.
- [XHTML1]
- XHTML™ 1.1 - Module-based XHTML (Second Edition), S. McCarron, M. Ishikawa, editors. W3C.
- [XML]
- Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fifth Edition), T. Bray, J. Paoli, C. Sperberg-McQueen, E. Maler, F. Yergeau, editors. W3C.
- Namespaces in XML 1.0 (Third Edition), T. Bray, D. Hollander, A. Layman, R. Tobin, H. S. Thompson, editors. W3C.
* 출처 : http://dev.w3.org/html5/html4-differences/
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