The Web Hypertext Application Technology Work Group (WHATWG) is in the process of developing HTML5 and more specifically Web Forms 2.0. Now these things I am excited about. For the more general HTML5, I'm very interested in the new CANVAS attribute. This will allow for many new features in the web world - such as drawing in HTML for graphs and games. And most importantly, it does the rendering for these graphics on the fly. Imagine an AJAX game which is able to render beautiful images without round trips to the server.

The other things I'm waiting expectantly on are of course the new tools in Web Forms 2.0. These new suggestions will contain a host of features which I now spend hours coding JavaScript for. Among the most interesting capabilities are:

• The Required Attribute
• Autofocus Attribute
• A Regular Expression Attribute
• Min/Max Attributes
• A Datetime Control
• And extensions to attributes such as Maxlength (to add support to Textarea controls)

Some of these items are already being developed and included in the Opera browser - especially the CANVAS tag - and it looks great there. But of course, I can't embrace these new technologies until Microsoft acknowledges their existence and supports them in IE. Then and only then can developers truly start using these controls. Ah, but when they do....