Badge of shame

20 January 2011

The W3C have unveiled a logo for HTML5. I’m not sure the world needs such a logo, but I think it looks pretty good. It reminds me of some of the promotional materials used by the Web Standards Project back in the day—simple bold lines that work well at small sizes, with a whiff of Russian constructivism.

[…] “But,” cry the cheerleaders of ambiguity, “we need some kind of term to refer to HTML5 plus CSS3!”

Citation needed.

I think the citation is pretty clear considering the amount the media use HTML5 as a catch-all term for modern browser capabilities. Is it technically accurate to call these features HTML5? Of course not. But is it worth ignoring the popular usage at the expense of pushing standards forward? I don’t think so.

Sure, it would have been great to have a term that was more technically correct but being able to say “oh, we’re not using Flash for this we’re using HTML5” and have someone understand roughly what you mean is incredibly valuable.

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From: Links

20 January 2011