HTML5 gets its final stamp of approval

It’s been a long, hard, winding road for HTML5 but the development language finally has an official stamp of approval.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)has put out a statement recommending the fifth version of the hypertext markup language.

“For application developers and industry,” the consortium says, “HTML5 represents a set of features that people will be able to rely on for years to come. HTML5 is now supported on a wide variety of devices, lowering the cost of creating rich applications to reach users everywhere”.

“Today we think nothing of watching video and audio natively in the browser, and nothing of running a browser on a phone,” said Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. “We expect to be able to share photos, shop, read the news, and look up information anywhere, on any device. Though they remain invisible to most users, HTML5 and the Open Web Platform are driving these growing user expectations.”

As ReadWrite notes the debates around HTML5 probably would’ve remain firmly in the preserve of developers were it not for Apple founder Steve Jobs’ vocal support for the language over Adobe Flash, whose media player he abhorred.