When I’m reading about future technologies and standards, many times it seems like the hype far outweighs the utility. HTML 5 is one of the few emerging standards that gets me excited and salivating to learn more.
Whether you’re a web developer like me who loves to spend a weekend writing code, or just a casual web surfer who enjoys great new web technologies, HTML 5 is going to change the way we experience the web. Here are a few of the high points:
- No Plug-Ins Required - Finally the web standards will catch up with the creativity of the developers. Imagine being able to create heavily interactive experiences with a few lines of code that works on all modern browsers. As I mentioned in a Friday Four (to some controversy), I’m pretty excited about being able to ditch Flash for most animation and video embeds. There won’t be any need for a bloated plugin with limited cross-platform support.
- Fun New Elements to Play With - We’ve learned a lot from the last ten years of web development, and one of the best parts of HTML 5 is the addition of several new tags to go along with common coding tasks. There will now be specific tags for “footer,” “video,” “nav,” etc.
- “Canvas” and Other Goodies - Want to be able to draw 2D images in real-time? You can do it with the “canvas” tag in HTML 5. There are also other goodies like the ability to create databases hosted on the client’s machine, and even proposals for built-in geolocation and CSS animations!
It’s a Good Time to Be a Web Developer
With all of these killer new technologies on the horizon, web developers are going to have lots of new toys to play with over the next few years. I can’t wait to see what The Church can come up with!
We still have a little while before HTML 5 is finalized and becomes an official standard, but it’s not too far off. Here are a few live examples to whet your appetite for what lies ahead of us…
- Flashless YouTube using HTML 5 (view in Safari 4)
- An incredible animated Mash-up using the HTML 5 canvas element (works in Safari 4 and Firefox 3.5) - be sure to right click!
- A foreign portfolio site built in HTML 5 (works in Safari 4 and Firefox 3.5) - found via this great read on Gizmodo
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