HTML 5

The new HTML 5 standard is gaining significant traction even though HTML 5 is still in the draft process and has not yet been ratified by W3C. Browser makers are already implementing key features of HTML 5 and bringing robust support for some of its most advanced capabilities to end users.

HTML 5 has many new features. HTML 5 specification is the description of a vocabulary that you can write to define a web page. HTML 5 can be written using two different syntaxe: html and XML. What is the syntax best for you depends on your developer needs, markets and applications. An HTML5 (text/html) browser will be flexible in handling incorrect syntax, while the XHTML variant of HTML 5 (XHTML5) will need correct markup to work.

Video is one of the most significant areas where HTML 5 has a major impact. It allows us to break free from the constraints imposed by proprietary browser plugins. It is an alternative to Adobe Systems’ very widely used Flash. HTML 5 video element integrates seamlessly with conventional HTML content and can be manipulated with JavaScript and CSS. The “video” tag in HTML already is available in various versions of Apple’s Safari, Firefox, and Opera, which at least in theory makes handling video on the Web as easy as handling images.

During the Google I/O conference last week, the search giant a YouTube mockup built with HTML 5. Mozilla’s Chris Blizzard has showed how to use JavaScript worker threads to programmatically detect and highlight motion in video as it is playing. The HTML 5 features required to implement these demos will all be available in the upcoming Firefox 3.5 release. Google has begun supporting a new HTML feature to show video in its Chrome browser.