It is strange he proposes a HTML4.2 without any hint of what it actually will contain, except fluffy words like "simplify", "streamline" and so on. This is actu

It is strange he proposes a HTML4.2 without any hint of what it actually will contain, except fluffy words like "simplify", "streamline" and so on. This is actually what XHTML and XHTML2 attempted - by means of the draconian error handling all parsing ambiguities would disappear, making parsing much simpler. By eliminating all legacy presentational HTML, the vocabulary would get much simpler and so on. The problem with XHTML was that is was too simple and elegant, and didn't consider the actual state of the web: There are already billions of malformed documents, and they dont go away just because you declare them illegal. HTML5 on the other hand accepts and embraces the actuale state of the web. By declaring rules for how to parse malformed HTML, it attempts to solve the major source of interoperability problems between browsers. But this also requires a much more complex spec. I don't like peddling conspiracy theories, but I have to mention that Crockfords attack at ECMAScript 4 only succeeded because of backing by Microsoft. Microsoft supports Crockfords notion that JavaScript absolutely does not need high-level features like classes, type annotations, packages and so on - we are fine with a minimal language, thank you! While at the same time focusing significant ressources to support C# (a much larger language than ES4) as a client side language through Silverlight. Crockford worked in secret with Microsoft on ECMAScript 3.1 before it went public, and I suspect this announcement means that they are working on a HTML4.2 proposal. And I am pretty sure this HTML4.2 will not cointain features like canvas, audio and video, since these features is a selling point of Silverlight relative to HTML.