W3C announces plan to deliver HTML 5 by 2014, HTML 5.1 in 2016

[Chippiewill]

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the group that manages development of the main specifications used by the Web, has proposed a new plan that would see the HTML 5 spec positioned as a Recommendation—which in W3C's lingo represents a complete, finished standard—by the end of 2014. The group plans a follow-up, HTML 5.1, for the end of 2016.

Under the new plan, the HTML Working Group will produce an HTML 5.0 Candidate Recommendation by the end of 2012 that includes only those features that are specified, stable, and implemented in real browsers. Anything controversial or unstable will be excluded from this specification. The group will also remove anything known to have interoperability problems between existing implementations. This Candidate Recommendation will form the basis of the 5.0 specification.

In tandem, a draft of HTML 5.1 will be developed. This will include everything from the HTML 5.0 Candidate Recommendation, plus all the unstable features that were excluded. In 2014, this will undergo a similar process. Anything unstable will be taken out, to produce the HTML 5.1 Candidate Recommendation, and an HTML 5.2 draft will emerge, with the unstable parts left in.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/09/w3c-announces-plan-to-deliver-html-5-by-2014-html-5-1-in-2016/

Finally looks like HTML5 will be finished once upon a time.

[HotelUser]

The progression and acceptance of industry standards to do with web development are painfully slow.

I don't really care about these standards being "official" anymore, because Chrome and Safari already support a great deal of what I'll ever use (and Chrome and Safari together have quite a good marketshare).

I'm more concerned about Apple and Microsoft restricting javascript compiling on iOS and Windows 8 RT. I think both companies doing this is going to hurt developers more than these standards being made official but we will have to see what happens.

[peteyt]

I just hope more people start using HTML5 and other things instead of flash - Android has brought flash back temporary but it will be removing it soon apparently. Luckily the BBC are updating their iPlayer this next week I think to use something different but there are many apps and sites that still rely on flash.