HTML5: An Introduction

Depending on your level of interest, HTML5 might be either a completely new term, a scary new idea you’ve just heard whispers about, or yesterday’s news.

First, the basic facts. HTML is the coding language used to program all websites. Whether you realize it or not, you’re looking at HTML right now. The current standard version of HTML is HTML 4.01 (or XHTML 1.0, but let’s ignore that). HTML5 is the proposed successor to HTML4, and is currently being finalized by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium — the head of the table, they make the rules).

So why is HTML5 such a big deal? Originally introduced under the name ‘Web Applications 1.0,’ one of HTML5’s main goals is to reduce (and hopefully fully eliminate) the need for proprietary web plugins. Services like Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight are arguably necessary to browse the web as it exists today, but these services are owned and trademarked by private companies — not a great situation for a public service like the web to be in. HTML5 aims to replace these proprietary services with new tags, including <audio>, <canvas>, and <video>. This will allow sites like YouTube to display content in a browser without the user having to download someone else’s plugin (in this case, Abode Flash).

Other new tags in HTML5 have been developed in response to how web design has progressed over the last few years. For example, <header> and <footer> tags have been created to handle specific types of content that have become standard on most sites. Other new functionality includes new types of form controls (date and time, email, url, search), built-in drag-and-drop, document editing, and many more.

So when will the brave new world of HTML5 be upon us? Due in part to many popular mobile platforms and their resistance to buggy proprietary plugins (Apple’s iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch line, namely), many major sites have already begun packaging content in this format. The aforementioned YouTube, for example, has a way to opt-in to HTML5 video instead of Flash at www.youtube.com/html5. One note: the site supports Microsoft Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari, because they’ve all agreed on the same video codec: h.264. Mozilla Firefox, on the other hand, supports Ogg Theora, but we’re waiting to see how that situation pans out (edit: there’s a rumor going around that Mozilla will announce support for h.264 at the I/O developer’s conference next month).

If you want to try HTML5 right now, make sure you have a modern browser installed and then point it at html5demos.com. Interactive canvas gradients!? The future of web is now.