What is HTML 5 ?

HTML 5 is the latest version of HTML and XHTML, the core markup language of www (world wide web). HTML 5 is being supported by all latest browsers. If you know HTML programming lanugage, things would be very clear to you. HTML 5 incorporates new api’s , new syntax, codes and tags in addition to the old ones. With HTML 5, the need of adobe flash player to play website-embedded videos could be eliminated. HTMl 5 adds to offline storage and use of websites more efficiently. HTML 5 would manage RIA (Rich Internet Applications) efficiently and without the need to use third party browser plugins.

Basic differences between HTML4 and HTML5

·         HTML4 supports the ‘tag soup’ i.e. the ability to inscribe malformed code and get them accurately on the document. But there are no written rules or guidelines for doing this. This implies that malformed documents are to be tested on various browsers.

·         To tackle this issue, HTML5 is being developed in such a way so that the developers need not waste their time and efforts in creating an error free web page.

·         Unlike its predecessor, HTML5 also includes many new tags and also new names for older tags with extra features like: local storage wherein a lot of information can be stored, JS-based hacks or Flash, validation form etc. so as to make the applications easy for the developers and speedier for the users.

Differences from HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.x

The following is a cursory list of differences and some specific examples.

·         New parsing rules oriented towards flexible parsing and compatibility; not based on SGML

·         Ability to use inline SVG and MathML in text/html

·         New elements – section, article, footer, audio, video, progress, nav, meter, time, aside, canvas, hgroup

·         New types of form controls – dates and times, email, url, search

·         New attributes – ping (on a and area), charset (on meta), async (on script)

·         Global attributes (that can be applied for every element) – id, tabindex, hidden, data-* (custom data attributes)

·         Forms will get support for PUT and DELETE methods too instead of just GET and POST (see Representational State Transfer for use cases)

·         Deprecated elements dropped – center, font, strike, frameset

As there is still interest in publishing a snapshot of HTML5, the W3C is still working on that (in conjunction with the WHATWG).