Knowledge blog

HTML5 has many new features and advantages using them. Especially integrating multimedia content on the browser application is very easy. Also there is no need of browser plugins such as Flash player to display rich media content. A fully HTML5 based website, game, e-learning content or other apps can really engage users and reach more audience. HTML5 comes with <audio>, <video> and <canvas> elements as well as integration of SVG content. HTML5 also have new elements like <section>, <article>, <header> and <nav> which enriches the semantic value of the document.

The following are some important features of HTML5.

HTML5 provides developers with new, meaningful ways to organize content. Using new tags such as
, , and , pages can be organized more relevantly. The cumbersome use of unstructured Div tags can be avoided. What this means for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is that search engines will have contextual information about the content for indexing, making it easier to present additional relevant results based on context. This move towards a more “Semantic Web” is what many are referring to as “Web 3.0”. Harnessing new semantic technologies will help to improve a Website’s discoverability and interrelationships.

HTML5 enables web developers to use cleaner, neater code. We can remove div tags and replace them with semantic HTML5 elements as described above. Bringing up responsive nature a web page is very easier using this clear markup code. The syntax in HTML5 is extremely clear and simple as compared to HTML4. One example of this is the DOCTYPE element. In HTML4 the DOCTYPE declaration was too messy and lengthy and used to refer an external source. However in HTML5 DOCTYPE element has been made extremely simple. For instance a mere is enough to specify the document type.

It is much easier to design fancier forms with HTML5. HTML5 by default provides options to design elegant forms without making much complication over css or use of extensive javascript. There will be different type of inputs, search and different fields for different purpose.

HTML5 has an inbuilt capability to play multimedia content such as audio and video. Thus we can avoid use of those annoying third party plugins.

In HTML4, in order to store important data on client side, browser’s cache was used. However, that cache is limited and doesn’t support relational storage mechanism. In HTML5, this issue has been addressed via Web SQL database and application cache that can be access via HTML5’s JavaScript interface

HTML5 offers an offline application cache facility which will load the page the user has visited even if the user is temporarily offline. This feature will help the files to load much faster and reduces load on server.

In HTML4 the communication between the client and server was done through streaming and long polling, since there are no web sockets available in HTML4. On the contrary, HTML5 contains web sockets that allow full duplex communication between clients and servers.

HTML5 completely supports geolocation. Once a potential user shares their location, an HTML5 app can use the location of the user. It can be important while developing a location based application or service. Previously, it was an extremely cumbersome task to get the geographical locations of the visitors visiting the site. It was even difficult when the website was accessed through mobile devices. On the other hand, in HTML5 is extremely easy to get the user location. HTML5’s JS GeoLocation can be leveraged to identify the location of the user accessing the website.

In HTML4, JavaScript and the browser interface with which user interacts, run in the same thread which affects performance. HTML5 contains JS Web Worker API which allows JavaScript and Browser interface to run in separate threads.

The proper implementation of HTML5 and CSS3 allows the designer to craft a compatible site or app that can work on all browsers including device browsers. On the other hand, HTML5 is still in the process of evolution and the currently available tags are being modified and also new tags are being added. Hence there may be lag of HTML5 working in older browsers but the proper use of HTML5 can eliminate this problem too. Remember the modern browsers are build prioritizing playing HTML5 content.