Today HTML5 reached the Recommendation stage inside the W3C, the last stage of W3C standards. Mozilla was one of the first organizations to become deeply involved in the evolution and standardization of HTML5, so today’s announcement by the W3C has a special connection to Mozilla’s mission and our work over the last 10 years.

Mozilla has pioneered many widely adopted technologies such as WebGL which further enhance HTML5 and make it a competitive and compelling alternative to proprietary and native ecosystems. With the entrance of Firefox OS into the smartphone market we have also made great progress in advancing the state of the mobile Web. Many of the new APIs and capabilities we have proposed in the context of Firefox OS are currently going through the standards process, bringing capabilities to the Web that were previously only available to native applications.

W3C Standards go through a series of steps, ranging from proposals to Editors’ Drafts to Candidate Recommendations and ultimately Recommendations. While reaching the Recommendation stage is an important milestone, we encourage developers to engage with new Web standards long before they actually hit that point. To stay current, Web developers should keep an eye on new evolving standards and read Editors’ Drafts instead of Recommendations. Web developer-targeted documentation such as developer.mozilla.org and caniuse.com are also a great way to learn about upcoming standards.

A second important area of focus for Mozilla around HTML5 has been test suites. Test suites can be used by Web developers and Web engine developers alike to verify that Web browsers consistently implement the HTML5 specification. You can check out the latest results at:

http://w3c.github.io/test-results/dom/all.html
http://w3c.github.io/test-results/html/details.html

These automated testing suites for HTML5 play a critical role in ensuring a uniform and consistent Web experience for users.

At Mozilla, we envision a Web which can do anything you can do in a native application. The advancement of HTML5 marks an important step on the road to this vision. We have many exciting things planned for our upcoming 10th anniversary of Firefox (#Fx10), which will continue to move the Web forward as an open ecosystem and platform for innovation.

Stay tuned.