Are You Ready For HTML5?

Intorducing The Next Core Technology To Power The Web

Jul 9, 2009 Matthew David

HTML5 is the first major update to the HTML Web standard in a over a decade. The goal of this article is to prepare you what is coming next.

Back at the dawn of the Web it was common to have updates to the core HTML specification. The first standard came in 1989, followed in 1995 by HTML 2, then HTML 3 in 1997. In 1998 along came HTML 4.0 with the death of the <FONT> tag, and then.... nothing. It is now 2008 and finally a new revision to the core HTML standard is being developed. It has been 11 years and HTML 5 comes with a boat load of improvements.

Why Standards Are Important

Standards typically have a single goal: to enable different groups to easily communicate with each other. Good examples of Interent standards include IPv6, HTTP protocol, and Mail services. Any company can build products that, if they use these standards, can effectively communicate with each other.

FireFox is built in an open and fair way. Support for Web Standards, such as HTML 4, XHTML, SVG and PNG are trade marks of the browser. Couple standards supports with a faster Web experience and it is clear why, in three years, Microsoft has lost 30% of its Web browser market share to FireFox (click here for more information on browser market share). Leveraging Web standards, products such as Mozilla's FireFox can enable Web developers to deliver better Web solutions. A great example of this is Google's Gmail. Gmail can take up to a minute to load in Internet Explorer. Using FireFox, or any other stanards based Web browser such as Google's Chrome or Apple's Safari, Gmail will open in only a few seconds.

It is through support of a consistent Web standard that companies such as Mozilla, Google and Apple can deliver better and richer Web solutions. Through standards, the Internet can be taken to a new level of experience. The next major standard to be adopted is HTML 5 (http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/).

The HTML 5 standard, as with previous versions of the HTML standard, is being governed by the World Wide Web Consortium Group (W3C), a group started by the Web's founding father Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Many companies, including Apple, Google, Yahoo!, Mozilla, Sun, Oracle and more openly contribute to the W3C.

What Is Changing In HTML, The Core Language

HTML 5 is collection of the standards that have evolved over the last few years. CSS, new HTML tags and SVG are all part of HTML 5. HTML 5 will contain a strict and a compatible version. The compatible version is backwards compatible with existing Web standards. This is important as it will take many years for HTML 5 to replace existing standards.

With that said, when developing a Web site that is purely in HTML 5 then you do need to be aware that the following HTML tags will be eliminated:

  • basefont
  • big
  • center
  • font
  • s
  • strike
  • tt
  • u

CSS can now achieve the same visual effects as with the older tags. In addition, the W3C group are recommending the inclusion of a new set of APIs (Application Program Interface) that allow developers to extend the functionality of a Web page significantly beyond it's current abilities. The new APIs include:

  • 2D drawing API which can be used with the new canvas element.
  • API for playing of video and audio which can be used with the new video and audio elements.
  • Persistent storage. Both key / value and a SQL database are supported.
  • Offline Web API
  • An API that allows a Web application to register itself for certain protocols or MIME types
  • Editing API in combination with a new global contenteditable attribute
  • Drag & drop API in combination with a draggable attribute
  • Network API
  • API that exposes the history and allows pages to add to it to prevent breaking the back button
  • Cross-document messaging
  • Server-sent events in combination with the new event-source element
  • Notification API to alert the user to new information, such as new e-mail messages in an e-mail application

What is becoming clear is that standards groups are establishing the core Web technologies as a basis to grow Internet based applications. In contrast the complex standards battle between Internet Explorer 4 and Netscape Communicator 4, the new support for HTML 5 standards is being met with enthusiasm and equal support by all Web Browser companies. The Web experience will be more consistent between software platforms making the customer experience equally consistent.

The copyright of the article Are You Ready For HTML5? in Webmaster Resources is owned by Matthew David. Permission to republish Are You Ready For HTML5? in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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