What can developers expect about HTML5?

Web developers are increasingly looking to HTML5, and as a document-centric placement protocol, HTML is increasingly unable to meet the needs of modern web applications, not to mention the protocol has not been updated for more than 10 years. HTML5 is designed to address issues such as interactivity, media, local operations in the web, and some browsers have tried to support some of the features of HTML5, and developers are expected to eventually be freed from those web Plug-ins.

However, it is important to note that, although some heavyweight Web technology manufacturers, like Apple,google, the Mozilla Foundation, Vimeo,youtube have already begun to support the new standard, the consortium says the HTML5 is still a long way ahead, and some of its rules are still controversial, The mainstream web will take a long time before it goes to HTML5, and developers have to face the dilemma of how to use today's technology to design rich WEB applications while preparing for future HTML5.

Modern HTML with Rich Web

Rich Web apps and HTML don't make a perfect match, and the web's parent, Tim Berners-lee, treats HTML as a markup language for creating platform-independent hypertext documents, which the web also treats as a document as XHTML is born.

So those who view the WEB as an application platform are annoyed, in 2004, Apple, Mozilla Foundation and Opera set up a hypertext technology Working Group (WHATWG), seeking to create a standard organization outside the consortium to build a better Web for applications.

In the 2007, their XHTML2 into endless strife, and later, when the consortium voted to absorb WHATWG's work and serve as HTML5 standard, even Tim Berners-lee extended an olive branch to the application-oriented Web, saying, now it seems that we Those efforts to XML are ineffective.

This is not to say that pure XML syntax is dead, although the direction of HTML development has changed, but while the HTML5 development, XHTML5 is also in sync, the difference is that XHTML will apply to those who have been converted to XML, and for ordinary developers, it is not necessarily the use of XHTML.

HTML5: Changes in labels

HTML5 absorbs some of the recommendations of XHTML 2, including the ability to improve the structure of the document, such as the use of new HTML tag Headers, footer, dialog, aside, fugure, etc., which allows content creators to create documents more semantically, before developers Some occasions are the use of Div.

HTML5 also contains some effort to separate content from presentation, and developers may be surprised that the B and I tags still exist, but their meaning has been different from before, and the meaning of these tags is just to identify a piece of text, not to set the bold or italic sample for them. U,font,center,strike These labels are completely removed.

The new standard applies to a number of new form input objects, including dates, url,email addresses, and other objects that increase support for non-la-G characters. HTML5 also introduces micro-data, a method that uses machine-identifiable tags to annotate content, making semantic Web processing simpler. In general, these structural improvements enable content creators to create cleaner, more manageable web pages that are friendlier to search engines and to read-screen software.

Implementing a standards-based Rich Web

However, the most exciting thing about HTML5 is the new APIs that allow developers to implement rich applications, such as graphics, animations, and multimedia, before HTML5, which require flash,realmdeia,quiktime a class of plug-ins that are not only vulnerable to security problems, And its audience is restricted.

HTML5 solves these problems by using the appropriate calibration language, content creators can use languages like MathML and SVG to create mathematical formulas and graphics that are easier to use across platforms than Flash, the Silverlight type.

Web developers will also cheer for HTML5 's audio and ideo tags, which allow Web pages to easily embed media, their coding standards are neutral, which means that browser vendors can use their own encoding output media, and its video tag will make those who do not support Flash Mobile browsers have benefited greatly.

Canvs tags make interactive Web graphics a better building, and developers can use JavaScript to manipulate objects in canvas, implement real-time interactive graphics operations, and even implement interactive games. In addition to these changes that can be seen, HTML5 also introduces browser-based program caching, which caches the application data locally (like the previous Google Gears plug-in), which not only speeds up Web programs, but also allows programs to be used offline. In fact, Google is now slowly canceling its support for Gears and turning to HTML5.

Browser plugin: Not dead yet.

Although HTML5 has introduced so many new features, do not expect those plug-ins to disappear overnight, pure HTML5 to achieve the current full functionality of the plug-in world is still a long time, not to mention those who need to continue to support the old system. For example, although Vimeo and YouTube have already started using video tags to output videos, it's not that simple, and the consortium has not yet determined which coding scheme to use, which means that the video doesn't guarantee that it will be visible on any device. Apple, Google and Microsoft, for example, are pushing H.264 code, while Open-source Firefox is unwilling because of licensing problems.

In addition, not all old systems will be HTML5 rewrite, for example, although Google itself is no longer bullish Google Gears and the main push HTML5, but Gooel admits that HTML5 does not realize the full functionality of Google Gears, will be based on Google G The application of ears to pure HTML5 is not easy to achieve.

Finally, a wide variety of browsers can also hinder Web developers from moving to HTML5, IE6, and older versions of Firefox,opera,safari do not support HTML5, so unless the vast majority of browsers are upgraded to their latest status, the HTML5 's development will still face various difficulties.

Early adopters

Although Microsoft has said that IE9 will support HTML5, but they are also cautious about the matter, Microsoft believes that the HTML5 standards are not established today, it is inappropriate to say that their browsers support most HTML5 features. In fact, no organization can be clearer than the HTML5 of the progress of the HTML5, and the consortium believes that the standard is still immature, functional establishment will not be completed until 2011 years ago, even then, to establish these things as a standard also need to 2022, that is to say, XHTML1.1 to HTML5 It will take about 15 years.

Anyway, HTML5 will be the most cutting-edge technology for the next 5-10 years, those early adopters that can find a lot of experience sites on the Web, and at the moment, the best browsers to experience HTML5 are those based on Webkit engines, such as Chrome and Safari,firefox not too streaming Chang. Web developers can use the current draft HTML5 to create a test site, of course, under the current browser distribution system, there will be some problems, the best HTML5 development resources on the line is Mark Pilgrim's excellent Dive into HTML5.

HTML5 Experience Site

Mozilla Bespin	An in-browser programmer ' s editor written using HTML Technologies
Youtube	YouTube ' s HTML5 player offers experimental HTML5 support
Vimeo	Vimeo Movies offer a link at the bottom for switching to a HTML5 player (Chrome, Safari, Ie+chrome Frame)
Merge Design	An HTML5 geolocation demo
Sticky Notes	A demonstration of HTML5 client-side storage
Wolfenstein 3D	Demo using the canvas tag (with how-to)--works in Firefox 3.6
Clouserw Soundboard	An HTML5 sound board showing off multimedia capabilities
Google Wave	Google Wave relies on HTML5 to some of its features
Freeciv	A game implemented in HTML5