HTML5: The Evolving Backbone of the Web
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is an Internet-based markup language that serves as the main architecture for nearly every website’s structure and content. Anything displayed in a browser is organized via HTML—it’s been around since the beginning, and it remains an immovable core to the web development process.
HTML was the first markup language developed strictly for the web—dictating the way browsers and software understand how to organize, interpret, and display a site’s text. Even though it has a firm place in the web’s history, HTML is still just as relevant today.
HTML is the static structure, organization, and content—think of early websites that were simple texts with some basic formatting. In HTML, specific parts of a document are labeled with “tags” to tell a browser how to display that text. At its most simple, think of HTML as <bold> & </bold> tags, hidden by the browser. Those tags make the text they bookend bold. Learn more about HTML and how other markup languages function.
Beyond text markup, HTML files also serve as basic site architecture, housing links to cascading style sheets (CSS), embedded server-side scripts to add stylistic elements to a site that connect the site to the database, and client-side scripts which control how things come to life in the browser. For example, PHP scripts can be embedded in a site’s HTML to control how information is pulled from the database, while JavaScript can be embedded in the HTML to control how that information is displayed in the browser.
These three components of HTML5 bundles, creating with more browsers, a more agile architecture, compatibility, and an efficient development team.
How HTML5 Is Changing Cross-Platform Development. One major advantage of HTML5 touts cross-platform application development. It’s a hybrid of three types of code: HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Put simply, HTML5 is a game-changer—developers can create structured web applications in a faster, more streamlined way. The latest and greatest in HTML,
So what’s new with HTML5? It’s still evolving, but its latest version is more versatile and solves problems that XHTML formerly addressed.
ADVANTAGES OF HTML5
Browser compatibility. A bottom-line reason HTML5 is considered the best? It’s fully supported by all major browsers: Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and more. HTML5 is incredibly supportive of mobile development. It applies both well with responsive design (most popularly, as a component of the Bootstrap framework) and is understood by all mobile browsers like Opera Mobile, Android, and IOS Safari. Also, new expandable navigation and collapsible menus that weren’t available in previous versions of HTML make it easier to build in features on a mobile site.
Mobile e-commerce: HTML5 also amps up mobile shopping cart functionality.
HTML5 links: Control everything from links and images and audio to style sheets that determine how it’s displayed (including animation and interactivity of all kinds).
Scripts & Plug-ins: HTML5 works in any browser-based application—and any client-side scripts like JavaScript can be embedded or linked to via HTML5’s <script> tag.
FEATURES NEW TO HTML5
HTML5 has incorporated many new features, like video playback and drag-and-drop—effects that developers could only implement before with the help of third-party plug-ins like Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, or Google Gears.
HTML5 has a few new APIs (application programming interfaces) that add excellent functionality, including:
Geolocation: When approved by a user, accesses the geographical location of a user.
Drag & drop: Allows any element in a page to be draggable, so you can define what to drag, where to drag it, and what the drop effectually does.
Local storage: The latest and greatest in caching, HTML5’s Local Storage API is an excellent replacement for cookies, making it powerful when it comes to cached information. ''A hybrid cookie-to-cloud storage method'' means information is stored even when the browser is closed. Content is saved for later viewing, which means pages load faster and there are no cookies to delete later.
Application cache: An API that allows a user to access a web application without a connection by creating an offline version. This strain puts less on the server, makes things run faster, and allows for browsing without a connection.
Web workers: JavaScript that run in the background separate from any other scripts that allow a user to continue accessing a site, clicking, and navigating, without having to wait for scripts to load.
SSEs: Server-sent events now preclude the need for a site request to updates from a server. A site loads fresh content because these automatic updates are sent via one-way messaging. Example, Twitter updates, stock prices, or news feeds.
New multimedia elements: New tags for audio and video mean your media plays how you want it to.
New semantic elements: HTML is a descriptive or “semantic” markup language, which means it labels logical, structural parts to a site in its code. In HTML4, a lack of well-structured semantic elements like <section> or <footer> meant that it was very difficult for search engines to know what was what within a webpage. HTML5’s new semantic elements, like <header>, <nav>, and <article> make the page’s sections crystal clear.
Native video allows for video to play without plug-ins or other software, so you can see videos on iPhones and iPads.
HTML5 Canvas, CSS3, and new graphic elements: Emerging with and alongside HTML5, CSS3 adds new design standards and new features. HTML5 also added new graphic elements, like <canvas>, which lets you draw via JavaScript in a browser, and <svg>, or “scalable vector graphics,” XML-based 2D graphics.
Location features: HTML5 can tap into location awareness, allowing browsers to access a user’s location via phone GPS, IP address, etc.
HTML4 to HTML5 changes: A number of elements were removed from HTML4 for the new version, but there are ways to migrate HTML4 to HTML5 relatively easily.
More accessible forms
Who needs to know HTML?
It’s easy to say that web developers have to know HTML—it’s one of the core technologies used on the Internet and the backbone of every web page. Pages can create in CoffeeCup by developers, Microsoft Expression Web, the Dreamweaver platform, or other HTML editors, but ease does not eliminate necessity. It’s always valuable to have developers who can hand-code HTML in a pinch. Its universality alone—and HTML5’s next-level capabilities—means it’s still a key skill on any developer’s resume. For the development of mobile as well, HTML5 is a must-have skill for its crucial role in the Bootstrap framework.