HTML 5

History

HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML Living Standard. It is maintained by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), a consortium of the major browser vendors (Apple, Google, Mozilla, and Microsoft).

HTML 5 Initial Release

HTML5 was first released in a public-facing form on 22 January 2008, with a major update and “W3C Recommendation” status in October 2014. Its goals were to improve the language with support for the latest multimedia and other new features; to keep the language both easily readable by humans and consistently understood by computers and devices such as web browsers, parsers, etc. without XHTML’s rigidity; and to remain backward-compatible with older software. HTML5 is intended to subsume not only HTML 4 but also XHTML 1 and DOM Level 2 HTML.

HTML 5 Models

HTML5 includes detailed processing models to encourage more interoperable implementations; it extends, improves, and rationalizes the markup available for documents and introduces markup and application programming interfaces (APIs) for complex web applications. For the same reasons, HTML5 is also a candidate for cross-platform mobile applications because it includes features designed with low-powered devices in mind.

While some features of HTML5 are often compared to Adobe Flash, the two technologies are very different. Both include features for playing audio and video within web pages, and for using Scalable Vector Graphics. However, HTML5 on its own cannot be used for animation or interactivity – it must be supplemented with CSS3 or JavaScript. There are many Flash capabilities that have no direct counterpart in HTML5 (see Comparison of HTML5 and Flash). HTML5’s interactive capabilities became a topic of mainstream media attention around April 2010 after Apple Inc.’s then-CEO Steve Jobs issued a public letter titled “Thoughts on Flash” in which he concluded that “Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content” and that “new open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win”.

This sparked a debate in web development circles suggesting that, while HTML5 provides enhanced functionality, developers must consider the varying browser support of the different parts of the standard as well as other functionality differences between HTML5 and Flash. In early November 2011, Adobe announced that it would discontinue the development of Flash for mobile devices and reorient its efforts in developing tools using HTML5. On 25 July 2017, Adobe announced that both the distribution and support of Flash would cease by the end of 2020. Adobe itself officially discontinued Flash on 31 December 2020 and all Flash content was blocked from running in Flash Player as of 12 January 2021.

Difference of Markup Languages: What Are They?

The terms HTML, HTML5 and XHTML are frequently used in web design. Most people who are new to web design, often find these terms confusing and don’t know which language of these three to learn. The confusion is understandable because all of them are markup languages and essentially serve the same purpose. To clear out the confusion, let’s take a look at their differences in detail.

Markup Languages are the essential tools required to create a webpage. Each webpage has some text, images, or any other sort of structured data displayed to the user. Presenting the textual or visual information to the user defines the markup of a website. In designing a webpage, we may need different fonts for different words, different colors for different types of text, and so on. We also need a universality in the markup, i.e., the webpage requires to look the same irrespective of the browser. It makes it necessary to have a standard markup language through which web pages can present information to the user.

Markup Languages use tags to determine the presentation format of the data. Tags are used to represent data in a structured and organized way. Common examples of tags include header tags, body tags, and so on. The most common markup-language for web pages is HTML, which was designed by Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World-Wide-Web.

HTML

HTML, which stands for HyperText Markup Language, was the first internet-based markup language used for web pages. However, HTML quickly evolved, and with the release of subsequent versions of it, Became a sort-of standard for markup languages. Although HTML is more of a standard than a single language, so are commonly referred to as HTML itself up-to HTML4. It is because of the need to differentiate it from the significant changes brought in by HTML5, which is the next and latest version of HTML.

However, before the release of HTML5, the World Wide Web Consortium (also known as W3C) started developing an extension of HTML based on the XML format to solve some browser compatibility issues. XML is another standard of markup language that is very similar to HTML but is somewhat stricter than HTML in error handling and formatting. The resulting language was named XHTML, which stands for eXtensible HyperText Markup Language. It was very similar to HTML4 but introduced some stricter rules.

Now let’s explore some of the differences in greater detail.

A group known as WHATWG developed HTML5 and was designed to improve upon the previous HTML versions and solve some cross-browser compatibility issues. We’ll use ‘HTML’ to refer to the pre-HTML5 versions of HTML. The key differences between HTML and HTML5:

Basis of Comparison HTML & HTML5

What is it?

Hypertext Markup Language, the primary language for developing webpages

A new version of HTML, offering new functionalities to interact with internet technologies for structuring and presenting the content.

Media Support

It does not offer any support for video and audio for any language. Offers support for audio and video as integrated into the language.

Geographical Support

The process of tracking the user’s location is cumbersome and all the more complicated if the user is logged-in on mobile devices. The language uses JavaScript Geolocation API that is used to identify the location of any user accessing the website.

Storage

Uses Browser cache memory as temporary storage.

Equipped with multiple storage options like web storage, SQL database, and application cache

Communication

Communication between client and server is done with the assistance of streaming and long pooling as it doesn`t offer socket support. The language allows full-duplex communication between client and server.

Browser Compatibility

As it is old, so all browsers support it.

Compatible with only a few browsers as it introduces new tags and elements.

Graphic Support

Needs third-party tools to provide vector graphic support.

Vector graphic support is by default as it has canvas and SVG built.

Threading

JavaScript and browser interface running in the same thread leads to performance issue.

It offers JavaScript web API support, which allows JavaScript and browser interface to run on different threads.

Error Handling

Not capable of handling inaccurate syntax or any other errors

Capable of handling incorrect syntax or any other errors

In short, HTML5 is just a better version of HTML with added features and functionalities.