HTML 5 finally finalized, eight years later we talk about how to change

Absrtact: The first time we talked about HTML5 to change the world is probably because of Steve Jobs, who insists on not being compatible with Flash on iOS, which takes a lot of courage in the era of Adobe's dominance of multimedia development. So many years have passed, though everyone is talking about HTML5,

The first time we talked about HTML5 to change the world was probably because of Steve Jobs, who insisted on not being compatible with Flash on iOS, which took a lot of courage in the days when Adobe dominated multimedia development. After all these years, although everyone is talking about HTML5, most people even forget that it is still a perfect system.

The 2007 World Wide Web Consortium (WWW Alliance) Project HTML5, until the end of October 2014, the eight-year specification finally formally finalized. Next, HTML5 will really start to subvert the native (Native) app world. Although the alarmist is a bit annoying. But if you look back at the way HTML has traveled over the years, you will not doubt its energy.

The birth of HTML5

Since the publication of the HTML4 in 1999, the Web world has grown rapidly and prospered. It was once thought that HTML standards did not need to be upgraded. Some companies dedicated to the development of Web apps have set up separate WHATWG organizations, until 2007, when the consortium took over from WHATWG to start developing HTML5 again.

HTML5 's development history, has the user's demand in the promotion, has the technology development person's demand to promote, has the huge commercial interest to promote. In the early days of the Internet, for users, the ability to open browser access to the Internet world is a magical thing, but the Internet development until around 2005, began to appear the next change, is broadband interconnection.

With the popularization of broadband and the enhancement of computer performance, people no longer satisfied with the simple internet to see news, send and receive mail, consumption of higher bandwidth entertainment products began to appear, is streaming video and web games. In fact, video and games are ancient needs, in the Internet is not universal, the demand for the way is offline transmission of VCD and game discs; Later, the internet gradually became popular, people changed the use of the way, by downloading software + local media Player to see the video, download the larger end play game.

But a better way to experience the consumer is to come up with and subvert everything that was before, streaming media and web games. YouTube and other companies to grasp the rapid rise of the trend, a variety of page tour companies are springing up.

HTML standards do not grasp the changes in the industry in a timely manner, browser products are not upgraded, this new demand by the browser plug-in content, that is flash. This business plug-in, deployed in billions of browsers, has become a fact standard. In 2005, Adobe invested heavily in the acquisition of Macromedia, The Flash, followed by a significant expansion of the FLV streaming media and the action script language, it is clear that the acquisition can be listed as a classic it mergers and acquisitions, FLV streaming media and flash games popular Internet, Adobe has grabbed a lot of profits from the new industry upgrades.

In addition to the fact that Flash is a commercial product, the consortium faces the embarrassment of-ie, the maker of another proprietary extension agreement. IE had a monopoly on desktop browsers and extended a lot of IE only syntax, and developers had no idea who those languages were defined. The entire web world, was kidnapped by two companies Microsoft +adobe.

Many it giants are unable to sit down, especially Apple and Google. PC operating system of the world difficult to break through, the Web browser by Apple pinned High hopes; the upstart Google, although a large number of sponsorship of Mozilla, but did not have a real impact on IE's status, the acquisition of YouTube found the lifeblood in the hands of Adobe, is also very sad, And Google's annual search box for IE and adoble flv payment is not a small number.

Since everyone is the chairman of the HTML5, OK, let's start again. Yes, HTML5 is actually born like this.

Second, HTML5 first stage: Web enhancement and breaking monopoly

Since the birth of HTML5, there have been two stages, namely the Web enhancement and mobile Internet. Let's start with Web enhancements. The rich enhancements of the Web experience are mainly manifested in:

WebApp HTML5 New offline storage, richer forms (such as input type=date), JS threads, sockets, standard extensions embed, CSS3 ... Streaming media HTML5 new audio, video games HTML5 added canvas, WebGL

Of course, HTML5 also for the search engine semantic analysis has been optimized, such as the new header and section tags, but also in the field of barrier-free and so do a lot of work, these are no longer described. HTML5 's efforts in streaming media and gaming have succeeded in curbing the development of flash and then curbing IE's proprietary syntax.

In the HTML5 standard upgrade process, Apple and Google also saw the browser market reshuffle opportunities, they participate in the HTML5 of the specification, while in the browser products. Apple first began to vigorously develop safari, set up WebKit open source projects, migrate Safari to Windows platform; Google initially sponsored Mozilla to develop Firefox, and later developed its own V8 engine, merging WebKit, Chrome was officially launched in 2008. "IE private specification +flash is not the standard, we are the standard" such slogans started in the next generation of browser wars, ie instantly became the monopoly representative of condemnation, and even became an obstacle to the development of the web (at that time IE6 has not been updated for several years, and the slightest fear of Firefox development).
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It happened that Microsoft also out of the dizzy strokes, launched a series that is incomplete support specifications and incompatible with each other IE7, 8, 9, 10, completely lost the support of developers.

Adobe's Flash was contained, brushed aside by the web overlords, IE's private standard was curbed, and the IE market share slipped until the latest mobile version of IE began to support webkit syntax. Do not know HTML6 is not to overthrow the WebKit monopoly.

Third, HTML5 second stage: Mobile Internet

With the ie+flash of Chrome and Safari and the decline of the HTML5, the next era, the mobile internet, came to an ending. HTML5 's Cross-platform advantage has been highlighted in the mobile internet era. HTML5 is the only cross-platform language for mainstream platforms such as PCs, Macs, iphones, ipads, Android, and Windows phone. Both Java and Flash dreamed of this location, but the dream was broken by iOS. At this time people began to study the development of Cross-platform mobile phone applications based on HTML5. Many people at that time that the original application is only a transition, like the same year from C/s structure into B/s structure. and learning C and Java very laborious, I since will web development, why not try HTML5.

The consortium set up at this time Device API workgroup, for the HTML5 extended camera, GPS and other mobile-specific APIs, however, the trouble is that the initial mobile internet iterations too fast, mobile OS in the Non-stop expansion of hardware APIs, gyroscopes, distance sensors, barometers ... Every year the mobile OS has a large version update. As a group of hundreds of member organizations, the World Wide Web is a very complicated process, from the proposal of standard draft to the agreement, which can't keep up with the fast iterations of the early mobile Internet.
The appearance of PhoneGap opens up a window for developers. Many people expect PhoneGap to continually expand the API to supplement the browser's shortcomings. Adobe saw PhoneGap as if to see the hope of reviving the status of the river, but after the Adobe acquisition of PhoneGap, and found that this thing a lot of problems, and open source so that Adobe can not like Flash to obtain commercial benefits, so the PhoneGap donated to Apache , renamed Cordova.

For a variety of reasons, Cordova's positioning eventually did not become a browser hardening, but toward a hybrid development. Based on the background of the time, they believed that the native is irreplaceable, the "original +HTML5" mixed mode is more meaningful. So now Cordova is often used by "native engineer +HTML5 Engineer" to collaborate on the app.

Facebook joined the consortium and led the mobile Web team. Facebook is a mixed web and has no territory on its mobile OS, and he doesn't like the native application ecosystem that Apple and Google control. The important goal of the Mobile Web team is to make the Web applications developed by HTML5 a native application experience. However, the contrary, it does not work hard to forget, the result is the effort has failed. In the 2012, Facebook gave up HTML5 news and flooded the world's it media, and HTML5 was instantly relegated to the doghouse.

Why did Facebook give up HTML5? The core was based on the HTML5 really did not make a good mobile app. Compared to Twritter and other competitors of the original App,facebook version of the HTML5 can not be satisfied with the user. For example, the push function, to the present HTML5 push and the original push experience gap is still huge, let alone HTML5 application of the page switching white, drop-down refresh/sideslip menu is not fluent and so on. Looking at the original engineers easy to shake, two-dimensional code, voice input, to share the circle of friends and other functions, but also let HTML5 engineers feel that they stand the wrong team.

Even if Facebook does not like to be controlled, it cannot take the risk of being discarded by the user. And Facebook has not mastered the key point-the mobile browser kernel. If the browser does not keep up, the rest is in vain.

And what is the browser's performance on the phone? Look at the high performance of the Google,chrome, but the Android browser is not chrome, but WebKit changed out of a crappy Android browser; look at Apple, iOS does not allow other browser engines to the app Store, and other apps that use the Safari engine can't call Apple's own JavaScript accelerator engine Nitro. The result is that Apple and Google, instead of actively implementing HTML5 about mobile apps on the web, are restricting HTML5.

Whether it was a lack of hardware capacity, or the intentional limitations of mobile OS manufacturers, in short, the result is obvious: in the early days of mobile internet, must be the world of native application ecosystem, iOS and Android first to become the boss, the other younger brother can find the opportunity to grow.

Facebook or phonegap is not going to be able to get a piece of the mobile Internet at the beginning, but sticking to it will often happen.

Four, HTML5 this time really come

HTML5 is finalized at this time, not late, the hardware performance is stronger, the handset OS iteration speed drops. With the finalization of HTML5 standards, all disputes will come to an ending, and now the era of HTML5 is coming. This technology, once hopeful and abandoned by many hopeful developers such as Facebook, will now tell you that the reasons that have disappointed you are now gone! This may sound amazing, and people can't help asking: Is it true? Let's analyze it carefully.

The industry commonly known as HTML5 has "sexual function" obstacle. That is, the HTML5 performance is inferior to the original, the development tool is inferior to the original life, the ability call is inferior to the native.

These issues have led developers to be unable to use HTML5 to make apps that are the same as their native ones. However, whether it's hardware upgrades or OS vendor policy changes, and the maturity of related software technologies, HTML5 's "sexual energy" barrier has been resolved.

Mobile-end hardware arms race 2011, the iphone 4s CPU is A5, now the iphone 6 is A8, according to Apple's previous press release, the speed of a total increase of 7.5 times times. This 3-year 7.5 times-fold increase in speed, flattening too many HTML5 performance problems. Apple, Google's strategic changes Google launched in late 2013, Android 4.4, built-in WebView is no longer a crappy Android WebKit browser, but chromium. After the iphone 5 release in 2012, HTML5 's performance on iOS was satisfactory, and Safari's exclusive JavaScript acceleration engine Nitro no longer mattered, but after the release of iOS 8, Apple took the easy way out of the three-party program call Nitro. Now any browser or application that calls iOS UIWebView can use nitro acceleration. The attitude of the two big handset operating systems and the browser giants has changed, making the development of HTML5 on the phone no longer limited, and this change is irreversible can only continue to move forward, this change is bound to have far-reaching impact. Although the development of the mature phonegap of software technology has slowed down, other product technology has matured. At the 2014 iweb Conference, many vendors ' products offered free or open source HTML5 solutions for developers.

Dcloud Company at Iweb Congress released the system's HTML5 "sex workers can be missing" solution, including the solution HTML5 performance problems of the mobile phone engine, super fast HTML5 development IDE product Hbuilder, and the 400,000 native API encapsulated into JavaScript objects To solve the problem of HTML5 ability Native.js technology. The HTML5 application developed based on this scheme can fully achieve the function and experience of native app. In addition, Dcloud has released an MUI framework. We all know that the default control style of the browser differs greatly from the native control style, and that a high-performance, style-experienced, UI framework like the native control is very important, and so it is not enough for a product such as jquery Mobile.

Intel has released the crosswalk engine, which lets Android 4.0-4.3 apps pack chromium engines instead of Android WebKit. Although the future Android 4.4 will occupy more market share, but the current mainstream Android phone system version is still 4.1, 4.2.

In the professional direction many companies have made good results. Touch of the COCOS2D-HTML5, Egret Runtime and Ludei Cocoonjs enhanced canvas performance, so that the HTML5 gaming experience better; UC, cheetahs and other mobile browsers also enhanced the performance of audio and video playback.

Whether it's hardware upgrades, software maturation, or operating system vendor policy changes, it's a powerful push to HTML5.
But pay attention, I said HTML5 outbreak, not refers to the mobile phone browser burst. Some people say HTML5 is bad, because users hate the process of opening a browser to enter a URL. I would like to say that the idea is a one-sided understanding of HTML5. Html5!= traditional browsers, although the programming language is HTML, Javascript, CSS, but the distribution is not the traditional site so simple. HTML5 application of the portal, but very little is the launch of the browser input URL, it can be in the Mobile desktop icon, can also come from the Super app (such as micro-trust Friends Circle), as well as search engines, application markets, advertising alliances ... Its entrance is everywhere. Its entrance is more than the native app.

V. The subversion of native apps

HTML5 's "sexual energy" barrier is resolved to approach the effect of native apps, so can it replace native app? Many people think that even if the HTML5 will develop better than now, it will be with the original app account for a part of the market pattern, the requirements of the long tail application will use HTML5, and mainstream application is still the world of native app.

But I think the idea is dangerous, as HP's senior told Watts: who would put a computer at home? The future HTML5 will certainly subvert the native app. The elimination of "sex work can" obstacle, only HTML5 disadvantage is weakened, but after the inferiority is eliminated, its superiority will shine, what HTML5 advantage is? For developers:

Cross-platform in the multi-screen era, the developer's pain index is very high, everyone expects HTML5 to play a savior. Multiple sets of code, different types of technical work, business logic synchronization, this is the process of torturing people. It's a bit like the early world of personal computers, where every computer has its own operating system and programming language, and developers are struggling with different versions, and in fact the popularity of DOS is largely because developers don't have the energy to write programs to other computers. Cross-platform technology in the early years mostly because of performance problems aborted, but in the middle and late hardware capabilities will occupy the mainstream, because Cross-platform is really just needed. Fast iterative mobile internet is a fast fish to eat slow fish era, who is satisfied with the needs of users faster, who is lower cost of trial and error, who has a huge advantage. Internet products are mostly free, and have network effect, after the user is very difficult to snatch. The use of primary development, from the recruitment, development, on-line every aspect of the efficiency is more than one times, and the more people involved, communication efficiency is often slowed more than one times. It is not easy to reduce the cost of entrepreneur financing, it is important to spend more efficiently. If you use a native-developed app and a competitor to use HTML5 to develop a app that doesn't make any difference, but your development costs are one-fold, I'm sure no investor would like to throw you money. Diversion Inlet Multi-HTML5 application diversion is very easy, super app (such as micro-trust circle), search engine, application market, browser, everywhere is HTML5 traffic entrance. But the original app's traffic entrance only has the application market. The smart HTML5 developers will, of course, play a variety of traffic portals to gain a stronger advantage. Distribution efficiency before the period of micro-trust Friends Circle Rage "neuro-cat", this game if put to the app Store, absolutely not so much traffic, super app brings the flow, far greater than the primary application market. If the micro-letter allows the game to create shortcuts on the desktop, if the game after the upgrade to solve the problem of continuing entertainment, the future unthinkable. In addition to many entrances, large flow, high diversion efficiency can not be ignored, everyone knows: Page tour and the end of the same advertising, the conversion rate of users, the page is far higher than the end of the tour.

HTML5 to the user's benefit is: and the flow of more than the entrance, distribution efficiency of the corresponding. Significantly reduce the threshold of use. User eyes see a point of interest, click, you should immediately start to meet user needs. For example, streaming media can be seen immediately, page tour can immediately play. And the current primary application market, users need to do this: Select an application, wait for download, confirm permissions, wait for installation, and then click Open. Such bad experiences will be overturned sooner or later. Whether it's apps, games or audio and video, the future will be the point. Who first satisfies the needs of users, who will win.

This is the so-called "the World martial arts, only fast unbeaten." Analysis to this point, we can clearly see that, whether it is to stand at the end of the user's point of view, or from the developer perspective, HTML5 will replace the current location of the native application. And this triggers a series of subversion.

What else will be changed?

HTML5, the original app ecosystem subversion, is an industrial revolution, many roles will be affected, we have to predict.

The standard HTML5 engine does not solve all the problems of HTML5, and the Internet giant, with its large traffic entry, is thinking of better built-in enhancements. Tencent launched the X5 browser engine, which is the opportunity to fancy.

At present, various browser manufacturers, application market manufacturers, and even ROM manufacturers are trying to integrate a better quality browser engine. If the micro-letter embedded WebView can run a better canvas game, if the 360 mobile phone assistants can release the point-and-use HTML5 application and the ability to experience consistent with the native, If the millet ROM built-in more powerful webview makes all HTML5 applications on the Millet mobile phone to run more smoothly. All giants will Wenfengerdong, yes, this battle will be the world's Second World War on mobile internet.

Application distribution market will face shuffle, because the huge flow of super app can easily become the entrance of the HTML5 application, and will form the bigger effect, the traditional application store, even under the line pre-installed, these low flow and inefficient distribution mode will be squeezed out of the market mainstream. It is also a super app's big Flow App Store, which, if properly transformed, will also be based on distribution HTML5 applications.

Native advertising and statistical SDK providers face a awkward, Google, Baidu and other web-based advertising and statistical services will gain greater advantage. Developers no longer need to pack the SDK and introduce a script.

Open source technology will become more popular in the mobile internet world. The openness of HTML has created a lot of open source products, and it has also contributed to the prosperity of HTML. There are a lot of JS frameworks on the GitHub, and the number of native open source code is very small. And the future of mobile internet world will be developed more quickly because of open source, there is also the opportunity of GitHub vendors.

Early HTML only need Notepad to write a few tags, medium-term HTML, JS, CSS more complex, need more advanced text editor, but after the arrival of HTML5, it's code volume, complexity, development model will be in line with the original development, need similar xcode, Professional IDE tools such as Eclipse to solve development and debugging problems. Some developers who are proud to use Notepad to write code will face a shift in thinking and even be eliminated by more efficient developers.

HTML5 's strength can lead to a lot of security problems, and the solution is not the same as the original, the industry may be the emergence of new security manufacturer leader.

Vii. Conclusion

Writing to the end, it feels a bit big. In fact, the future of how to develop is no one can accurately predict, variables are very many. But I think the trend of making users and developers more convenient is not wrong. We welcome you to discuss the issue of HTML5 and refine the truth in the controversy. (36 Krypton will be a priority for some HTML5 developers to contribute to the discussion, but not limited to HTML game development, browser kernel, lightweight application distribution, mailbox tips#36kr.com)