re: tantek's comments on HTML5 as a term (linkified comment posted here as zeldman's comment form has an overly aggressive spam filter)

It tests things that it claims or implies are “HTML5″ (or conflates them as such) that are not actually part of HTML5.

Really? Still?

Being overly pedantic about what features are in the HTML5 spec and what is not does not help people better understand this new set of feature and technologies. For instance, your new book and video HTML5 Now cover the <canvas> element and its API. Now technically, the element itself is a part of HTML5, but the 2D context is broken out into a separate W3C spec. Right, so the getContext method is HTML5, but canvas's fillRect and lineTo methods are not HTML5. Does this clarification help the web community?

While the "Open Web Platform" is a fine umbrella term capturing HTML5, CSS3, SVG, Canvas, and all related specs, it did not and will not win the branding war.

Brad Neuberg covered this ground well in his post Why I'm Going to Keep Calling it HTML5:

I originally thought the term Open Web would become how people referred to these things. "Oh, CSS3, Geolocation, etc.? Those are Open Web technologies!" I was even part of a group here at Google called the Open Web Advocacy team that was all about pushing things like HTML5, CSS3, SVG, and more forward. You know what? The term Open Web never really took off; I would say the term "Open Web" and people would give me a quizzical look. I even tried boiling it down to a succinct set of bullet points about what makes something an "Open Web Technology," but no dice.

We're not doing the web community nor these specifications and features a service by clarifying what parent document their IDL resides in. We could be really technical about it and share that the WHATWG moved to an unversioned spec and now it's just HTML. The W3C HTML working group just voted in similar direction.

Now, we could use a compromise term like "HTML5 and related specs" or "HTML5 and friends". In fact, on html5test.com, Niels broke out a number of tests into a "Related Specifications" section.

But, one of the design principles of HTML is to pave the cowpaths; I think our nomenclature should reflect this as well.

2010.08.01