HTML5 INTRODUCTION

What is HTML5?

HTML5 will be the new standard for HTML, XHTML, and the HTML DOM.

The previous version of HTML came in 1999. The web has changed a lot since then.

HTML5 is still a work in progress. However, most modern browsers have some HTML5 support.



How Did HTML5 Get Started?

HTML5 is a cooperation between the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG).

WHATWG was working with web forms and applications, and W3C was working with XHTML 2.0. In 2006, they decided to cooperate and create a new version of HTML.

Some rules for HTML5 were established:
New features should be based on HTML, CSS, DOM, and JavaScript
Reduce the need for external plugins (like Flash)
Better error handling
More markup to replace scripting
HTML5 should be device independent
The development process should be visible to the public


New Features

Some of the most interesting new features in HTML5:
The canvas element for drawing
The video and audio elements for media playback
Better support for local offline storage
New content specific elements, like article, footer, header, nav, section
New form controls, like calendar, date, time, email, url, search


What do we know about HTML5?

You probably have heard of HTML5 by now, I guess the most popular new stuff would be playing video without Adobe Flash, HTML5 evangelist should thank Mr.Steve Jobs for turning it into a technology celebrity.

Besides, you might have heard of creating animation and playing music without plug-in, rich input control such as date picker, color picker, slider without javascript, and lastly offline data storage.

Anyway, this is just part of HTML5. You may want to check it out yourself from time to time - HTML5 (including next generation additions still in development).

New Features:

HTML5 introduces a number of new elements and attributes that helps in building a modern websites. Following are great features introduced in HTML5.

New Semantic Elements: These are like <header>, <footer>, and <section>.

Forms 2.0: Improvements to HTML web forms where new attributes have been introduced for <input> tag.

Persistent Local Storage: To achieve without resorting to third-party plugins.

WebSocket : A a next-generation bidirectional communication technology for web applications.

Server-Sent Events: HTML5 introduces events which flow from web server to the web browsers and they are called Server-Sent Events (SSE).

Canvas: This supports a two-dimensional drawing surface that you can program with JavaScript.

Audio & Video: You can embed audio or video on your web pages without resorting to third-party plugins.

Geolocation: Now visitors can choose to share their physical location with your web application.

Microdata: This lets you create your own vocabularies beyond HTML5 and extend your web pages with custom semantics.

Drag and drop: Drag and drop the items from one location to another location on a the same webpage.