HTML5 and Canvas 2D have reached Candidate Recommendation status, High Resolution Time and Navigation Timing are Recommendation, while HTML 5.1 and Canvas 2D Context Level 2 are Working Drafts.
W3C has recently announced that the HTML5 and Canvas 2D specifications are now “Candidate Recommendation”, meaning they are feature complete, and no more features are to be added before reaching the final Recommendation status by the end of 2014. Organizations can now confidently develop HTML5 and Canvas 2D tools without fearing that the specification might change over night. For the following 18 months, W3C will focus on interoperability and testing in order to make sure HTML5 is implemented compatibly across browsers, servers, email clients, and other web tools.
A small number of proposed features are at risk to be removed from the specification or postponed to later releases due to lack of implementation, including hgroup, command, menu, dialog, details, and others. Two Canvas 2D features are at risk: Path objects and Hit regions.
Two related specifications have reached Recommendation: High Resolution Time – defining a JavaScript interface meant to provide the current time in sub-millisecond resolution, and Navigation Timing – an interface for accessing timing information related to navigation and elements.
Work has already started on HTML 5.1 and Canvas 2D Context Level 2, the plan being for these specifications to reach Recommendation status by 2016, according to Paul Cotton, W3C HTML Working Group Co-chair. Following the current trend in application development, W3C offers a nightly version of HTML 5.1 with the latest edits for those interested in being up to date with this standard’s evolution.
