HTML5? Why should one be interested in knowing the HTML's version anyways? You must be wondering as to why should you or anyone be concerned about HTML when we are usually focused on .Net, JAVA, Flash, Flex, etc. Continue reading to find the answer and you will realize what HTML5 has in store for us and why we should be looking forward to it. Don't worry if you are not a developer as this article primarily focuses on HTML5's offerings and not on the syntax or the markup, etc.
Firstly, HTML5 is a major upgrade to the existing HTML 4.01 specification and trust me when I say 'major', it's actually a big take-off from what we use & see on the web. And don't be surprised to know that probably lot of us are already using browsers, like Firefox & Chrome, which in fact support (some if not all) HTML5 specifications. A lot of experiments & beta applications built using HTML5 standards are available online but as the specification is not rolled out completely, you won't get to experience a full-fledged web application soon. One of the biggest & most popular web application or a platform Google Wave is actually leveraging a lot of HTML5 features and if you have used 'Google Wave' then you would surely appreciate HTML5's offerings.
What's new in HTML5 then?
- Drag-n-Drop functionality - earlier achieved by DHTML or by embedding Flash movies
- Extended Local Storage - a logical extension of cookies but allows lots of MBs of data; can be used to make your web applications work in offline mode as well.
For example: GMail can be accessed even if the user is not connected to the internet. This is achieved by using extended local storage to save mail data, etc. - Canvas Element - a new element introduced in HTML5 which allows the developers to create a MS Paint like drawing application. Checkout this experiment where this new element has been extensively & very effectively used. Also, to read more about this experiment, you can jump to this article on my blog.
- New Parsing Rules - a move to do away SGML legacy allowing flexibility in parsing the HTML content.
- Native Audio & Video Content - this is a great addition since this will allow the developers & designers to look beyond Flash & focus on the content as opposed to the technology (Flash). The web developers will be able to embed the audio/video content directly without having to depend on Flash Player or other plugins as there will native support for multimedia content while allowing JavaScript to control the playback of the same.
- Inline SGML & MathML
- New elements like article, section, aside, header, footer, nav, etc. have been introduced for a better semantic document structure. For a complete list, jump to this link.
- Some new input elements like date, datetime, time, url, email, search, color, etc.
