An Introduction to HTML 5
HTML 5 is the latest iteration of HTML released in 2011. HTML 5 provided the long-needed upgrade as well as paved the way to future development. The project started in 2007 and is still in development. It is presumed to be completed within 2022.HTML5 is backwards compatible with its previous versions. It was designed to provide web rich experience without installing any extra plug-in. It supports multimedia content and graphics much more easily than its previous counterparts. It was designed to work on every platform (that is cross-platform) independent of the hardware underlying which might be tablets, cell phones, televisions etc. The basic advantages of HTML5 over its predecessor are as follows:-
- Embedding high quality multimedia contents such as audio, video, images, animations etc has become much easier.
- Replacement of div tags with semantics make codes much cleaner.
- Each part is separated with their own semantics making every part distinct.
- The overall presentation of the website can be overhauled with new elegant forms and text designs.
- The websites created with HTML5 is much more consistent and compared to others.
- Front-end programming, discussion boards, wikis makes web app development easier.
- Provides its own mechanism for offline loading making page available while offline as well as reduced load on server and fast loading.
- Uses sessionStorage and localStorage instead of cookies making client side database safer.
- Easier integration of geo-location with any available resources to the web browser.
- Backward Compatibility makes support of previous websites.
Some of the disadvantages of HTML5 are as follows:-
- Only supports modern web-browsers for full support is required. (Supported browser is Internet Explorer 9 and above,Firefox,Opera)
- Even though it supports languages however language in HTML5 is still on development which can take years to complete and might complicate things.
- Since it offers rich media content that are compressed and presented, licensing issues has come up.
Even though HTML5 is still developing, some of the fruits of HTML5 have started appearing like:-
- Online Games and Apps: – Popular games like Quake II, WPilot, Wolfenstein 3D, Aves Engine likewise has been ported to HTML5 and dedicated gaming sites using HTML5 has begun appearing.
- Mobile OS: – Some of the mobile OS like Firefox OS and Carbyn OS are completely dependent on HTML5 as the whole OS itself acts as a web browser.
- Eye Candy Websites: – Visually appealing and eye catching websites has begun appearing using HTML5 technology.
HTML5 is definitely the update that was worth updating. Not only it has future proof abilities but also overcomes all the shortcomings of the previous versions making it one of the top contender as well as supported web design markup language.
