title: &lt;/html&gt;
url: https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2015/06/05/End-of-HTML
hash_url: c767299015aacd265652750d66d1f5e3

<p itemprop="description">Item: The W3C HTML Work&#xad;ing Group char&#xad;ter <a href="http://www.w3.org/2013/09/html-charter.html">is ex&#xad;pir&#xad;ing</a>.<br />
  
 Item: Dis&#xad;cus&#xad;sion on what to do <a href="https://github.com/w3c/charter-html/issues/14">is
in&#xad;con&#xad;clu&#xad;sive</a>.<br />
  
 Item: Things are <a href="https://whatwg.org/issues/data.html?period=12">pret&#xad;ty qui&#xad;et</a>  in
 the WhatWG.<br />
  
 Con&#xad;clu&#xad;sion: The best thing to do about HTML is <em>noth&#xad;ing</em>.</p>

<p>As <a href="https://github.com/w3c/charter-html/issues/14#issuecomment-108639350">Sam
Ru&#xad;by points out</a>, in&#xad;ter&#xad;est in work on &#x201c;vocabulary&#x201d; (by which they mean the
ac&#xad;tu&#xad;al angle-bracketed thin&#xad;gies that go in&#xad;to HTML) seems pret&#xad;ty lack&#xad;ing.</p>

<p>Me, I think HTML is done. Which doesn&#x2019;t mean I think that the whole
Web-programming plat&#xad;form is in a good state:</p>

<div class="main-image"><a href="https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2015/06/05/Browser-problems.png"><img  alt="Brower problems" title="Brower problems" class="norm" src="https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2015/06/05/Browser-problems.png" /></a></div>
<div class="caption"><p>(I post&#xad;ed this on Twit&#xad;ter a year or two
ago.)</p>
</div>
<p>The browser-as-a-platform is based on a lousy pro&#xad;gram&#xad;ming lan&#xad;guage
ad&#xad;dress&#xad;ing a lousy ob&#xad;ject mod&#xad;el and us&#xad;ing a lousy stylesheet lan&#xad;guage for
vi&#xad;su&#xad;al&#xad;s. Each of those could and should be re&#xad;placed by some&#xad;thing bet&#xad;ter.
HTML? Not per&#xad;fec&#xad;t, but plen&#xad;ty good enough.</p>

<p>Not on&#xad;ly is HTML fin&#xad;ished; Even if we want&#xad;ed to im&#xad;prove it, there are
no ob&#xad;vi&#xad;ous can&#xad;di&#xad;dates to do the work.
The W3C has re&#xad;peat&#xad;ed&#xad;ly walked down blind HTML al&#xad;leys. The WhatWG mod&#xad;el was
nev&#xad;er re&#xad;mote&#xad;ly sus&#xad;tain&#xad;able.</p>

<p>Let&#x2019;s down tools and fo&#xad;cus on more im&#xad;por&#xad;tant prob&#xad;lem&#xad;s.</p>
