The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the group that manages development of the main specifications used by the Web, has proposed a new plan that would see the HTML 5 spec positioned as a Recommendation—which in W3C’s lingo represents a complete, finished standard—by the end of 2014. The group plans a follow-up, HTML 5.1, for the end of 2016.

via W3C announces plan to deliver HTML 5 by 2014, HTML 5.1 in 2016 | Ars Technica.

The new HTML 5.1 will be smaller as a number of technologies (such as Web Workers and WebSockets) were once under the HTML 5 umbrella but have now been broken out into separate specifications. It will also have less stringent testing requirements.