A Preview of HTML 5

A Preview of HTML 5

Chris Hutchison | 7/09/2011

With the emergence of HTML 5 web developers have been able to finally move on from version 4, which enjoyed more than a decade of popularity. With restrictions in different languages and browsers, developers and publishers sought a new foundation to enhance new techniques and to provide enhanced functionality. HTML 5 introduces and enhances a wide range of features including form controls, APIs, multimedia, structure, and semantics. Work began on HTML back in 2004 with major key players and a  joint effort between the W3C HTML WG and the WHATWG, participating in the W3C effort with the four major browser vendors: Apple, Mozilla, Opera, and Microsoft, utilizing their many diverse interests and expertise.

One of the key foundations of HTML 5 is structure. Elements were created to structure the page in a set standard and order, and move away from the variety of common structures, such as headers, footers and columns. The new header structure allows for more levels of headers then the previous 6 set for HTML 4. This also creates a cleaner nested mark up sections for easy backwards compatibility. HTML 5 introduces new div elements that force compatibility and solves many issues relating to browser compatibility. These new elements include header, aside, footer, nav, article and section. By enforcing HTML coding standards, publishers and developers can enjoy simpler and less troublesome code when it comes to testing in the series of browsers available.

HTML 5 is being improved all the time and there are many key features apart from the ones mentioned that have made markup more flexible and appealing to developers and publishers. Even though the specification isn't finalized yet, all major browser manufacturers are making sure their browser is ready for the future, which is HTML 5.

tags: Web Development