HackerReposA FIELD GUIDE TO OPEN SOURCE
ProSponsor the shelf♧ 0
← Back to top all-time
whatwg
html
HTML2015–2026
whatwg / html

html

HTML Standard

Web Development
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
149Distinct people
217Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
9.5KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

HTML Standard

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

I tried to leave some details here on the situation downthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12849375 As for actual technical differences, the vast majority of them are…

domenicd used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 7:02:50 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year217 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-08-27 22:16:26 UTC to 2026-10-17 23:55:29 UTC.

0204060802015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments20152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 3 submissions, 4 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 0 submissions, 10 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 2 submissions, 7 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 2 submissions, 8 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 27 mentions; 0 submissions, 27 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 19 mentions; 3 submissions, 16 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 14 mentions; 4 submissions, 10 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 24 mentions; 1 submissions, 23 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 80 mentions; 8 submissions, 72 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 1 submissions, 10 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC734
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC10010
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC927
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1028
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC27027
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC19316
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC14410
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC24123
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC80872
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC11110

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
This repository hosts the HTML Standard. Code of conduct We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all. Please read and respect the WHATWG Code of Conduct. Contribution opportunities We appreciate all contributions, see the guidelines for contributing for details, including information on how to build HTML output from the source file so you can preview your changes locally. Tests Tests are in the html/ directory of the web-platform-tests repository. Blame As the source file is too large for GitHub's blame utility, use blame for source on searchfox instead.
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

7 sources
domenicd·Nov 1, 2016Recommendation phrase
I tried to leave some details here on the situation downthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12849375 As for actual technical differences, the vast majority of them are bugs introduced during the copying process, or just places where they haven't caught up to our bug fixes/new features/removals of unimplemented features. (Bug fixes especially roll in quite frequently; see https://github.com/whatwg/html/commits/master .) There are some differences around conformance requirements, as some of the W3C HTML editors see their fork as a venue for writing a nice official-looking documenton how they think certain HTML elements should be semantically interpreted and used. The big ones I remember are around figcaption, main, hgroup, and others. My favorite is when they made it a high priority to change one of the examples not to use the Flyi
Read the rest
ng Spaghetti Monster since it might be controversial. This does not affect implementations of browsers though, just what conformance checkers (validators) like http://checker.html5.org/ tell you about whether your document is conformant. You can get a full comparison via the third-party tool https://diffofhtmls.herokuapp.com/.
In HTML 5.1 is a W3C Recommendation
domenicd·Nov 1, 2016
Hi there, one of the WHATWG HTML editors here. > Meanwhile, W3C HTML5 has defined releases that are thoroughly scrutinized, reviewed, and debated in endless committee meetings. While this was true in the past, these days it's not really the case. They mostly just copy and paste our work without scrutinizing it, and usually without understanding it (as can be seen by the bugs they introduce during the copy-and-paste process). There aren't really any technical deliberations or committee meetings, and they don't follow a well-defined process; the most recent fork (from which HTML 5.1 is based) was actually done without the knowledge of the membership, and broke several aspects of W3C process while doing so. Why do they do this? Well, it seems to be largely an issue of institutional face-saving. See e.g. https://github.com/w3c/charter-html/is
Read the rest
sues/14#issuecomment-1...: "When the HTML WG co-chairs and Team presented our proposed After HTML5 plan to the W3C Advisory Board earlier this year, we received a clear message that it was not appropriate to delegate or assign the maintenance of a W3C Recommendation outside the organization." In other words, since they started copying and pasting back in the day with HTML 5.0, they can't stop now. Meanwhile there's actually a lot of interesting deliberation between web developers and browser vendors over in the WHATWG HTML Standard's bug tracker. https://github.com/whatwg/html/pulse might give a reasonable overview. Compare to https://github.com/w3c/html/pulse. Some relevant corroborating links: - https://annevankesteren.nl/2016/01/film-at-11 when this all started - https://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Fork_tracking monitoring the ongoing copy-and-paste-induced confusion - https://github.com/w3c/html/issues/364 wherein they monitor our tree for things to copy and paste over - https://github.com/w3c/html/commit/19fcaf241f4417b2078bc26bf... example commit of them copying and pasting our work en masse (Spot the bugs introduced! It's a fun game!)
In HTML 5.1 is a W3C Recommendation

MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

A few shortcuts

/
Search the collection
?
Open this guide
Esc
Close dialogs and navigation

Your saved repositories and interests stay in this browser.