What’s all the uproar with HTML 5 about?
While releases of new versions of code typically don’t make much of a splash, HTML 5 is different. It introduces many new features, some of which can drastically change the way websites are built.
These are some of the main features that HTML 5 brings to the table.
Defining Page Structures
HTML 5 gives the webmaster the ability to define different areas of a website. For example, you can use the <nav> tag to define the navigation area and the <footer> tag to tag your footer.
Before there was no way to associate captions with an image. Now you can associate it with the <figcaption> tag.
Why would you want to do this? Primarily for SEO reasons. Using these tags allows you to “tell” search engines which parts of your website are important and which ones aren’t.
Asynchronous Loading
The <async> tag allows you to tell browsers to load a particular part of a website separately.
This is especially useful for sites with heavy code. If you have a big JavaScript app loading for example, you can make the browser load the rest of the site first while it’s loading the JavaScript code.
This prevents the loading of code from slowing down the entire page load.
Simple Audio and Video Integration
In the past, to add video or audio to your site you had to embed some sort of video or audio player. This could be quite a hassle, especially for webmasters who aren’t extremely tech savvy.
In HTML 5, adding audio or video is as simple as using the <audio> or <video> tag.
Build Graphs, Draw on Screen and Add Images on the Fly
Using a combination of HTML 5 and JavaScript, you can now create whole canvases on the fly on your website.
The <canvas> tag allows you to bring graphs, drawing on screen and many other graphical features to life.
Offline Browsing
With HTML 5, you can store files on your reader’s computer, making offline browsing possible.
Admittedly, this feature is still in its infancy and is still technically complex. But just opening this door is a big step towards a previously impossible task.
Offline browsing is especially big for mobiles. Giving browsers the ability to browse offline on a phone makes it possible for your customers to access your site even in zero reception areas.
Built-In Email Validation
In the past, to validate form data you had to use JavaScript. Now you can just do it in HTML.
HTML 5 can “recognize” what a proper email is supposed to look like and make sure that email field inputs conform to that template.
HTML 5 brings a lot of unique features to the table. Some of them are big, some are small. One thing you can be sure of: HTML 5 will enable some very advanced websites to emerge that just wouldn’t have been possible before.