Just as you probably guessed, HTML5 is the next evolution of HTML, or Hyper Text Markup Language. Most websites are designed and are created using HTML code, which turns plain text into readable WebPages you can navigate through. The last form of HTML, which was HTML4 was released in 1997 and has been tweaked here and there with the upgrades of the Internet overall. The goal of HTML5 is to improve the code to be able to support the latest multimedia, but still following the code for technology devices to read and understand. Web designers and web developers should learn about the new HTML because it will soon take over the current HTML4.
HTML5 will add a number of features to the functionality of HTML that HTML4 is not compatible with. Many platforms require plugin functionality that HTML4 cannot support, such as Flash. The iPhone and iPad don’t support Flash right now, which becomes problematic for users.
Two major features of HTML5 are media playback and storage offline. It’s common that web designers have to look to Flash for showing videos or playing music. HTML5 will allow sites to embed codes with simple tags that will automatically play the media your website needs. You can now insert images; audio and video directly into any document and easily manipulate them through the coding. The second aspect and new addition to HTML is the idea of being able to create files or draft emails without Internet connection and have them automatically sync next time you’re connected to the Internet.
As an advanced version of HTML4, HTML5 will include new syntactical features such as <video>, <audio> and <canvas> elements, making the JavaScript easy to update. Although HTML5 isn’t finalized just yet, you can still use part of it on supporting browsers: Safari, Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer 8. All major browsers will support HTML5, but it won’t work on old browsers (which many people still use). There are experimental versions and limited settings you can use, but enough to start learning about the new web design feature. It will take time for HTML5 for be used instead of Flash because websites will need to re-do all of their video and animations they currently use in Flash. Codes need to be transferred from Flash to HTML, which take time and money. It will take a long time for Flash to go away completely.
The idea behind HTML5 is that the web will work better for you once the coding becomes widespread. And web designers will have an easier time implementing multimedia.
