W3C names four editors to work on HTML specification

While the W3C searches for a technical editor for its HTML5 specification – to fill the position left empty by Ian "Hixie" Hickson – it has announced an editorial team to work with that technical editor. The four person team comprises Travis Leithead (Microsoft), Erika Doyle Navara (Microsoft), Ted O'Connor (Apple) and Silvia Pfeiffer (independent consultant). These editors, in combination with a technical editor, will take over the task of maintaining and preparing the HTML5 specification so that it can become a W3C "Recommendation", the final stage of W3C's process.

Jeff Jaffe, W3C's CEO, says that the organisation hopes to still achieve that state by 2014, in part thanks to the recent funding from Adobe, Google and Microsoft. The changes in the past week have, according to Jaffe, been the result of arrangements made in April to allow Hickson to disengage from the stabilisation process for the W3C HTML specification, so he could work on WHATWG's HTML Living Standard, which will coordinate with W3C through the W3C WHATWG Community Group. Jaffe expects WHATWG's work to feed into what is currently called HTML.next, which will be developed after HTML5.

Whether the W3C's HTML5 specification will be regarded as definitive when it does appear is still unclear though. WHATWG's approach appears to be more inline with the expectations of browser makers like Apple, Mozilla, Google and Opera, which isn't surprising given it was created by individuals from all those organisations. They also already implement much of what is in the HTML5 specification in their browsers and, given the rapid release cycles of web browsers from Mozilla and Google, it could be that many HTML.next features will already be in browsers by the time the W3C moves to work on that.

(djwm)