Mozilla Evangelist Comments on Apple's Recent HTML5 Demos

Apple recently released an HTML5 showcase intended to highlight the company's commitment to open Web standards. The demo, which championed the inclusive nature of open Web standards such as CSS3, JavaScript, and HTML5 had one problem –– it only worked within Apple's proprietary Safari Web browser.

This hasn't gone unnoticed by other supporters of open Web standards, namely Mozilla evangelist Christopher Blizzard.

On his personal blog, Blizzard posted a profanity-laced entry that called out Apple for making the implication that the open standards highlighted could only be experience on the Safari browser.

"A huge percentage of the world does have access to standards like HTML5. Today," said Blizzard.

Blizzard also points out that Firefox provides the best HTML5 support according to the compatibility website caniuse.com, which we confirmed, as long as future versions of the browsers are factored into the comparison. When the criteria is limited to the Present and Near Future options, which would include the browsers currently available, Chrome, Safari and Firefox all have the same HTML5 compatibility rating of 90 percent.

This is not to say that the information on caniuse.com is inaccurate. Statistics for the Future criteria are compiled from developer information, Webkit builds, experimental builds and platform previews.

That said, plans and features for future browsers are always subject to change, which means HTML5 compatibility for these future browsers, while informed, is still somewhat speculative.

Blizzard also commented on the nebulous terms in which people think of HTML5 and the confusion over who supports it and how long it has been supported.

"The most important aspect of HTML5 isn’t the new stuff like video and canvas (which Safari and Firefox have both been shipping for years) it’s actually thehonest-to-god promise of interoperability."