Comment by DjDarkman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DjDarkman | Hacker News Reader

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> CSS3 is not HTML5 and that fact is not debatable at W3C.

HTML5 is like AJAX, it's just an umbrella term in reality. When you hear "AJAX library" you probably think of a library that does a lot more than just HTTP requests. Same goes for HTML, it's almost useless without some CSS.

> Geolocation has been removed from the main HTML5 spec.

InnerHTML wasn't in the spec originally, but everyone used/had it anyway because it was a good idea.

> WebSQL has been dropped in favour of IndexedDB (both are separate specs).

It was dropped only from Firefox, just like h.264, but that didn't stop anybody from using it. Some browsers have IndexedDB, some have WebSQL. IndexedDB was just a work in progress last time I checked, WebSQL already had existing implementations.

> HTML5 is like AJAX

Yes, but we're talking about W3C documents using W3C terminology, not colloquial misnomers.

> InnerHTML wasn't in the spec originally, but everyone used/had it anyway because it was a good idea.

I was mistaken about Geolocation. It hasn't been removed (as many other similar features were), this one been developed as separate spec from the beginning.

Separation of HTML5 and other HTML5-ish specs is decided by way W3C works, internal politics, HTML group charter, and inter-dependencies between the feature and rest of HTML. It doesn't mean that something was or wasn't a good idea.

> It was dropped only from Firefox, just like h.264, but that didn't stop anybody from using it.

That's not related. W3C test suite covers W3C HTML5, not Firefox (and H.264 vs Firefox is a completely different problem).

WebSQL suffers from very real problem — it has only one DB implementation, which is SQLite. This means that sites will end up denending on that particular SQL dialect with all its quirks (e.g. sqlite storage is weakly, dynamically typed) and in long-term will require to be bug-compatible with SQLite.

I encourage everyone not to use it, even if it's available now, because we'll miss last chance to remove it.

(I love SQLite in my apps, but API for the web needs to be much smaller and tighter than that to withstand decades of people copying & pasting code they don't understand).

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