There's so much wrong with HTML5. Here's a list of some of the biggies:
1. Backward-looking rather than forward-looking. HTML5 wants to be completely compatible with all existing web content out there, it wants to document all parser quirks, error-handling mechanisms, useless and outdated tags, proprietary APIs. Regardless of the usefulness of these things going forward, they want them to all be part of HTML5.
When Microsoft took the IE team and made them the Avalon (WPF) team, they decided to build on a clean slate rather than be bogged down by the idiosyncrities of the past, and they ended up with something much less complex, more forward-looking, and more powerful for the developer and the end-user. HTML5 will be the opposite.
2. It's one monolithic spec. There are new features in HTML5 (video tag, canvas tag, new controls, storage APIs), but they aren't segregated into their own spec like they should be.
Take CSS. CSS 2.1 is a single monolithic spec that still isn't done after what, 8 years? CSS3 is separated into modules, some of which are ready to be finalized once CSS2.1 is done. HTML5 would be much more likely to succeed if it were modularized as well.
3. The motivations and politization of the parties involved. HTML5 started as a separate effort by the "WHAT WG", which essentially was Mozilla+Opera+Safari -- in other words, the (at the time) "little people" in the browser market -- started because they saw the W3C not moving effectively with XHTML.
When the W3C decided to restart the HTML working group, the members of the WHAT WG only agreed to participate if 1) the draft of HTML5 they had worked on would be adopted *as is* as the W3C's first draft, and 2) the editor of the WHAT WG HTML5 spec, Ian Hickson (a paid employee of Google whose sole job is to write web standards), would be made the editor of the W3C spec as well.
Issue #1 (backwards-looking) above is quite obvious if you look at the members of WHAT WG and their motivations: they want their browsers' marketshare to increase and the only way for that to happen is for them to increase their compatibility with existing web content.
In all, HTML5 has a number of issues. These are just some of the main ones. It's in worse shape than the early pre-reset Longhorn project; they need to take a step back and start over and come up with something that's truly better for the long run of the web. Otherwise, as another poster noted, they'll lose out to Flash, Silverlight, etc. (Why do you think that Microsoft turned the MSHTML team into the Avalon (WPF) team back in 2001? Because they wanted to make something that was actually designed out to do the things that develoeprs want to do, and that users want it to be able to do.)
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