Html5

Abstract:

HTML5 is a markup language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web, and is a core technology of the Internet originally proposed by Opera Software. It is the fifth revision of the HTML standard (created in 1990 and standardized as HTML4 as of 1997)and, as of May 2012, is still under development. Its core aims have been to improve the language with support for the latest multimedia while keeping it easily readable by humans and consistently understood by computers and devices (web browsers, parsers, etc.). HTML5 is intended to subsume not only HTML 4, but XHTML 1 and DOM Level 2 HTML as well

HTML5 has turned into a catchy buzzword for the new cool stuff, just like ‘Ajax’ and ‘Web 2.0’ a few years back. Most of the ‘Ajax’ apps didn’t use any XML and weren’t even asynchronous. That didn’t matter because most of it was a lot better than what came before.

Because of HTML5, developers are excited to try out new stuff, browser makers are rushing to improve standards support, and users are downloading new web browsers. When all of that is happening, It doesn’t matter who got their definition wrong.

History:

The current state of HTML5 isn’t as confusing as it once was, but it still isn’t straightforward.

There are two groups working on HTML5. The WHATWG is creating an HTML5 specification using its process of “commit then review.” The W3C HTML Working Group is taking that specification and putting it through its process of “review then commit.” As you can imagine, it’s an uneasy alliance. Still, there seems to finally be some consensus about that pesky “space or no space?” question (it’s HTML5 with no space, just in case you were interested).

Perhaps the most confusing issue for web designers dipping their toes into the waters of HTML5 is getting an answer to the question, “when will it be ready?”

In an interview, Ian Hickson mentioned 2022 as the year he expected HTML5 to become a proposed recommendation. What followed was a wave of public outrage from some web designers. They didn’t understand what “proposed recommendation” meant, but they knew they didn’t have enough fingers to count off the years until 2022.

The outrage was unwarranted. In this case, reaching a status of “proposed recommendation” requires two complete implementations of HTML5. Considering the scope of the specification, this date is incredibly ambitious. After all, browsers don’t have the best track record of implementing existing standards. It took Internet Explorer over a decade just to add support for the abbr element.

The date that really matters for HTML5 is 2012. That’s when the specification is due to become a “candidate recommendation.” That’s standards-speak for “done and dusted.”

But even that date isn’t particularly relevant to web designers. What really matters is when browsers start supporting features. We began using parts of CSS 2.1 as soon as browsers started shipping with support for those parts. If we had waited for every browser to completely support CSS 2.1 before we started using any of it, we would still be waiting.

It’s no different with HTML5. There won’t be a single point in time at which we can declare that the language is ready to use. Instead, we can start using parts of the specification as web browsers support those features.

Remember, HTML5 isn’t a completely new language created from scratch. It’s an evolutionary rather than revolutionary change in the ongoing story of markup. If you are currently creating websites with any version of HTML, you’re already using HTML5.