Is this HTML5?
In short: Yes.
In more length: The term “HTML5″ is widely used as a buzzword to refer to modern Web technologies, many of which (though by no means all) are developed at the WHATWG, in some cases in conjunction with the W3C and IETF.
The WHATWG work is all published in one specification (known as “Web Applications 1.0″), parts of which are republished in a variety of other forms, including an edition optimized for Web developers (known as HTML5), and one which focuses mainly on the core HTML language (which you are reading right now). In addition, two subparts of the specification are republished as separate documents, for ease of reference: WebVTT and WebRTC.
The W3C also publishes parts of this specification as separate documents. One of these parts is called “HTML5″; it is a subset of this specification (the HTML Living Standard).
1.1.1 How do the WHATWG and W3C specifications differ?
The features present in both the WHATWG and W3C specifications are specified using identical text, except for the following (mostly editorial) differences:
- The W3C HTML specification refers to the technology as HTML5, rather than just HTML.
- Examples that use features from HTML5 are not present in the W3C specifications since the W3C specifications are published as HTML4 due to W3C publication policies.
- The W3C HTML specification defines conformance for documents in a more traditional (version-orientated) way, because of a working group decision from March 2011. This specification, in part driven by its versionless development model, instead uses a conformance definition that more closely models how specifications are used in practice.
- The W3C HTML specification omits a paragraph of implementation advice because of a working group decision from June 2010.
- The W3C HTML specification includes a paragraph of advice redundant with the ARIA specifications because of a working group decision from March 2011.
- The W3C HTML specification gives incomplete advice regarding the
altattribute and instead references other documents on the matter because of a working group decision from March 2011. - The W3C HTML specification includes a link to an incomplete document that contradict this specification because of a working group decision from Februray 2011.
- The W3C HTML specification has different prose regarding the use of tables for layout purposes because of a working group decision from March 2011. In contrast, this specification unambiguously disallows the use of
tableelements for layout purposes. - The W3C HTML specification requires authors who are writing HTML e-mails with images to people they know can see the images (e.g. a wife sending her husband photos of their child) to nonetheless include textual alternatives to those images, because of a working group decision from April 2011.
- The W3C HTML specification does not state that the
imgelement’saltattribute is its fallback content, because of a working group decision from April 2011. - The W3C HTML specification is missing a clause that requires conformance checkers to discourage cargo-cult accessibility authoring because of a working group chair decision from May 2011.
- The W3C HTML specification is missing some conformance constraints that would make documents misusing
canvasinvalid, because of a working group chair decision from June 2011. - The W3C 2D Context specification has a different API for handling focus and selection in the 2D canvas API, because of a working group chair decision from May 2011.
The following sections are only published in the WHATWG specifications and are not currently available anywhere else:
- The
PeerConnectionAPI and related video-conferencing features. - New hyperlink features: the
downloadattribute to make download links and thepingattribute for hyperlink auditing. - The WebVTT format and some text track API features.
- Rules for converting HTML to Atom.
- The
cssElementMapfeature for defining CSS element reference identifiers. - An experimental
UndoManagerinterface. - An experimental specification of the legacy
window.find()API. - Some predefined Microdata vocabularies.