HTML 5 may not be finalised before 2022

The next version of the HTML web programming standard is unlikely to be finalised until 2022, according to a source within the web standards community.

"The current best estimate for final delivery is 2022," the source said last week. I can't reveal the source's identity, as I was asked not to, but I can say the person in question is in a significant enough role to know what they're talking about.

Officially speaking, HTML 5 is on track to "reach the W3C Candidate Recommendation stage during 2012", but the source thinks this target is around a decade off. It's already been 12 years since HTML 4.0 hit its W3C Candidate Recommendation stage.

The idea of HTML 5's final publication being so far off is both bad news and, in some ways, irrelevant. The new generation of web standards is crucial for widgets and, perhaps more importantly, handling web video sans Flash, but it doesn't require final publication to start being used. Elements of HTML 5 have already found their way into Internet Explorer 8 and the latest version of Chrome.