HTML - New HTML5

In 2009, the WHATWG announced that the development of the HTML5 specification was in its final stages. Then it was planned to finish the specification this year and publish the HTML5 snapshot in 2012. However, soon after, we realized that the demand for new HTML features is high, and therefore we must continue to support HTML and add new features until we can call “HTML5” complete. As a result, we switched to a new development model - without versioning. Instead, we will simply have a living document defining technology as it develops.

Since there is still interest in publishing the HTML5 snapshot , the W3C is still working on it (with the WHATWG).

Since the specification is now a living document, we are announcing two changes:

1. The HTML specification will now be known simply as “HTML”, with the URL http://whatwg.org/html . (We will also continue to support the Web Applications 1.0 specification , which contains HTML and a number of related APIs such as Web Storage, Web Workers, and Server-Sent Events.)
2. The WHATWG HTML specification can now be considered a “living standard.” This is more advanced than any other version of the HTML specification today, so it’s senseless to call it just a draft. We will no longer follow the “snapshot” model of the development of a specification with rare “requests for comments”, “calls for implementation” and so on.

WHATWG worked for many years, and we were going to change the name last year, but we decided to wait a bit, because people still often used the term "HTML5". However, the term is now mainly used to refer to something related to web standards, so it's time to move on!

UPD. TheShock wrote a voluminous commentary “ What does the new development model html5 promise us ”.