[varbhat]

i thought that HTML spec is immutable.

[maxloh]

The HTML spec is actually constantly evolving. New features like the dialog element [0] and popover [1] were added every year. But removing something from the spec is very rare, if it ever happened before.

[0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...

[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...

[redwall_hp]

The W3C spec was. But WHATWG and HTML5 represent a coup by the dominant browser corporations (read: Google). The biggest browser dictates the "living standard" and the W3C is forced into a descriptivist role.

The W3C's plan was for HTML4 to be replaced by XHTML. What we commonly call HTML5 is the WHATWG "HTML Living Standard."

[arccy]

the old sages in ivory towers handed us a spec engraved in stone and expected is to live by it

no wonder they were sidelined

[JimDabell]

The WHATWG HTML spec. is famously mutable. They literally call it a “living standard” and it separates them from the versioned W3C standard.

[tommica]

Yep, doesn't this make certain pages not work anymore?

[therealmarv]

it will. It will make old non-updated pages break with same fate as old outdated pages which used MathML in the past and were not updated with polyfills.

[onion2k]

It makes them not work in Chrome. For any application that supports XSLT they'll continue to work fine.

[troupo]

It's immutable in the sense of "only remove stuff after incredibly careful consideration".

Which Chrome has transmuted into "we do whatever we want to do". Remember their attempt to remove confirm/prompt?

[meindnoch]

Here's the HTML spec: https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/

[maxloh]

An implementation with >90% market share becomes the defacto standard.