What is HTML5?

by justin@cstoday.com

When considering HTML5 there are many important things to understand about how it differs from previous versions of HTML and XHTML (specifically what makes it better), and exactly what it can do for a website. This is a brief and general overview of some of its defining features and characteristics.

HTML5 has been big deal in the tech world because it represented a shift from the "web-page" toward something more dynamic and interactive.

HTML5 is, by in large, a revision of HTML4 that  creates a more complex interactive medium that works with multiple device types allowing for a deeper, faster, more accurate, and more satisfying interaction with the web. 

HTML5 allows web developers to mark-up pages with more precision with more explicit language. By doing things like, having the code language to provide video, audio, and animations, the webpage can avoid having to retrieve and send information form a third party, or a plug-in feature. Features like this also mean that HTML5 websites interact more accurately with web browsers, allowing for things like better responsiveness and rendering across devices.

With advances in hardware, web technologies, and software, HTML5 is built, more than any previous version of HTML or XHTML, to respond to rapid change affectively. Coding language, like technology, is always changing, and is hard to keep up with, so developing a language that is intuitive to HTML4, but still could meet advancing technology needs became necessary.

HTML5 is more organized and systematic than its predecessors (It was written to replace HTML2, XHTML1, and DOM level2) Where older versions of HTML and XHTML were failing to adjust and grow with technological development HTML5 is at the front of web technologies, and is built not only to work with applications, but to provide the foundational structure upon which they can grow.

It improves cross-device communication between different device types that use HTML allowing for a web experience that doesn't bias desktops and laptops over things like tablets and cell-phones. Rather, HTML5 is made to interact with multiple access devices equally, meaning that a webpage will operate across devices (i.e. desktop, mobile, tablet, etc.) without any reduction in performance related to the rendering of the page as the device communicates with the host.

 The advance of mobile access and the use of app and widget functions are supported by HTML5, surpassing many limitations of HTML4 code.

Of course, there are some existing compatibility issues with HTML5 and the internet as it stands now, such as issues with browsers not supporting HTML5 though, support can typically be built in. HTML5 has made efforts to keep as much compatibility as possible between HTML4 and itself, but it is only a matter of time before HTML becomes the preferred code source, and outdated codes, like HTML4, will be forced to update, or to find ways to stay compatible.  

HTML5 is a new force in web coding language designed and implemented to be present for at least the next decade. Over that time it will grow with the advances in technology, application and widget interface interaction and provide the basis on which many web operations take place. 

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