HTML 5 is the next generation of the Hypertext Markup Language. Since HTML 4 was released in 1997, HTML development had been at a standstill, while the Web has advanced by leaps and bounds in recent years — so much so that HTML 4 can no longer keep up with today’s increasingly “rich” Web applications. HTML 5 not only addresses HTML 4’s functional shortcomings for Web applications, it also aims to improve HTML’s interactive capabilities and support today’s diverse, complex Web content.
Exciting features:
1. New tags that describe content semantically Take a look at two examples from IBM: the source code of a typical blog today might look like this: Mokka mit Schlag
Mokka mit Schlag
Spring Comes (and Goes) in Sussex County
Yesterday I joined the Brooklyn Bird Club for our annual trip to Western New Jersey, specifically Hyper Humus, a relatively recently discovered hot spot. It started out as a nice winter morning when we arrived at the site at 7:30 A.M., progressed to Spring around 10:00 A.M., and reached early summer by 10:15.
But does it count for your life list?
Seems you can now go [bird watching via the Internet](http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/
2007/04/cone_sf). I haven’t been able to test it out yet (20 user limit apparently) but this is certainly cool. Personally, I can’t imagine it replacing actually being out in the field by any small amount. On the other hand, I’ve always found it quite sad to meet senior birders who are no longer able to hold binoculars steady or get to the park. I can imagine this might be of some interest to them. At least one elderly birder did a big year on TV, after he could no longer get out so much. This certainly tops that.
Copyright 2007 Elliotte Rusty Harold
Even with proper indentation, this is still a rather messy collection of deeply nested divs. In HTML 5, you can replace them with elements that carry direct semantics, as in the example below: Mokka mit Schlag
Mokka mit Schlag
Spring Comes (and Goes) in Sussex County
Yesterday I joined the Brooklyn Bird Club for our annual trip to Western New Jersey, specifically Hyper Humus, a relatively recently discovered hot spot. It started out as a nice winter morning when we arrived at the site at 7:30 A.M., progressed to Spring around 10:00 A.M., and reached early summer by 10:15.
But does it count for your life list?
Seems you can now go [bird watching via the Internet](http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/
2007/04/cone_sf). I haven’t been able to test it out yet (20 user limit apparently) but this is certainly cool. Personally, I can’t imagine it replacing actually being out in the field by any small amount. On the other hand, I’ve always found it quite sad to meet senior birders who are no longer able to hold binoculars steady or get to the park. I can imagine this might be of some interest to them. At least one elderly birder did a big year on TV, after he could no longer get out so much. This certainly tops that.
Copyright 2007 Elliotte Rusty Harold
That way, the browser knows what each part of a page represents — for example, which part is navigation and which part is the main content. Beyond cleaner code and semantic tags, this change brings more benefits: search engines can more accurately tell which part of a page matters most, and it will also render better on the non-standard browsers used on phones and other devices.
2. Improved Web form handling
HTML 5 introduces Web Forms 2.0, giving developers many new options and new features for handling form input and submission more simply and efficiently. The most exciting feature of Web Forms 2.0 is input validation. Today we have to implement the same functionality through JavaScript or server-side logic. Take, for example, a form like the one below: 
In HTML 4 we would have to write code like this, then validate it with JavaScript or a server-side script: 
In HTML 5, the required and email attributes handle validation directly, like this: 
3. Providing APIs for Web development
HTML 5 will provide several APIs that can do what many plugins do today. Audio and video playback support: Audio and video tags, for instance, let developers play Web video and audio directly without third-party tools — which means users can toss a lot of plugins and keep their browsers cleaner: Download this video
Today, the Opera browser already supports the video tag. Vector graphics support: The
4. Editable portions of a web page
HTML 5 will support user interaction. The contenteditable attribute lets you decide which part of a page can be edited — very practical for wiki-style sites that anyone can contribute to.
5. Local storage
Local storage lets users keep using the Web while offline.
Support for some HTML 5 features:
After five years of work, the HTML 5 specification was released in 2008, and parts of it are already implemented in some browsers. Still, the full feature set of HTML 5 won’t be finished for several years. At the Google I/O developer conference, Google Engineering Vice President Vic Gundotra expressed the company’s commitment to the next generation of HTML, HTML 5. Although HTML 5 is still a draft and the W3C committee is still engaged in lengthy discussions about it, HTML 5 is already being widely implemented — whether as an experimental demo or as the core of certain Web applications.
Vlad Vukicevic, technical lead on the Mozilla Firefox project, says HTML 5 supports video, Firefox 3.5 has just added video support, Google Chrome also supports the video tag, and Microsoft supports certain HTML 5 features in Internet Explorer 8, such as local storage, AJAX navigation, and several DOM prototypes. Molly E. Holzschlag, Web evangelist at Opera, says Opera supports Canvas and plans to support video. Apple, too, supports video and audio tags plus Canvas technology in its Safari browser (Canvas was invented by Apple).
Will HTML 5 defeat RIA technologies like Flash and Silverlight?
Ian Hickson, co-designer of the HTML 5 specification, says the goal of HTML 5 is to free the Web from those closed rich-media plugins — they come from independent vendors and don’t belong on the open Web. Hickson says using a single company’s products is a risk for the open Web: what if they stop development, or start charging? Hickson adds that, as with Windows in the past, it would be frightening if our main development platform were controlled by a single vendor.
Vukicevic, who leads Firefox, says Mozilla wants to stay open and ensure that technologies like video aren’t controlled by a handful of companies, but whether HTML 5 and Canvas ultimately replace Flash, Silverlight, and JavaFX is up to developers. Vukicevic thinks IE8’s lack of support for some HTML 5 features is a problem for developers: given IE’s market share, developers either have to use Microsoft’s APIs for extra work or fall back on technologies like Flash. The plugin side: they’re better, and they’re already implemented Although Adobe, Microsoft, and Sun all took part in drafting the HTML 5 specification, they all say their own technologies are necessary. HTML 5 is still a standard in progress and may take five to ten years to be finalized, so it’s too early to make comparisons. A Microsoft spokesperson says Silverlight still needs to exist because it includes advanced features such as a better programming model, C#, 3D capabilities, and the ability to run outside the browser. Dave Story, Adobe’s vice president of developer tools, says HTML 5 faces many challenges: the browser market is still fragmented, compatibility problems between browsers are severe, and the HTML 5 timeline suggests HTML 5 + CSS 3 may take ten years to be finalized. In the meantime, Flash will keep evolving and delivering a better user experience. Sun vice president James Gosling, widely known as the father of Java, says JavaFX is far superior to HTML 5 in rendering, performance, and presentation. Analyst Cote says these rich Web plugins face no immediate threat — it will be many years before their features are achieved — and he hopes these plugin technologies will continue to exist even after HTML 5 ships. Google’s Fette agrees: HTML 5 is just a starting point, and companies like Google will keep rolling out their own technologies, such as dragging and dropping images onto the Web. Several industry giants will face tough choices Most of the companies involved in HTML 5 are either browser vendors or rich Web application tool developers — rarely both, with Microsoft being the exception. Almaer says this puts Microsoft in a bind: it has invested heavily in Silverlight, and the Silverlight team exists to enhance the browser. If HTML 5 does that easily, what’s the point of Silverlight? Google, too, will have to make some choices. Its YouTube uses Flash for video, and HTML 5’s video support will force it to revisit the question, weighing cost against benefit.
To a developer like me, HTML 5 is essentially about adapting to today’s Web 2.0 by pushing higher-level technology down a layer, so that “rich” applications are supported directly by the browser. At most it replaces Ajax and some closed plugins. But I don’t think it will have much impact on Flash. The Flash family is an interesting one: people use it for animation, for websites, for desktop apps, and for browser-plugin-based web apps, and so on. Adobe is in the imaging business to begin with — however excellent HTML 5 may be, you’re not going to make animations with it, are you? If there is any impact, it will be on the web app and desktop app side — and after all, Flash started out as just an animation tool. Wouldn’t it be better if HTML 5 considered letting SWF files play directly without Flash Player? Let’s get one thing straight: Flash and HTML 5 will be complementary, not adversaries!