Part of being a good user and consumer is understanding how
technology works, why we use it the way we do, and what that barrage of
acronyms and PR jargon means. We're here to help you make sense of it
all, and to give you a better appreciation of how those transistors,
pixels, and antennas work together to deliver the conveniences of the
modern world to your living room or office.
What is HTML5?
We're sure by now you've heard the term "
HTML5"
thrown around by the likes of Apple and Google. This is the next
evolution of HTML, or Hyper Text Markup Language, which forms the
backbone of almost every site on the Internet. HTML4, the last major
iteration of the language, debuted in 1997 and has been subsequently
poked and prodded so that it can handle the demands of the modern Web.
Why is it such a big deal?
HTML 4 has been tweaked, stretched and augmented beyond its initial
scope to bring high levels of interactivity and multimedia to Web sites.
Plugins like Flash, Silverlight and Java have added media integration
to the Web, but not without some cost. In search of a "better user
experience" and battery life, Apple has simply dropped support for some
of these plugins entirely on mobile devices, leaving much of the
media-heavy Internet inaccessible on iPads and iPhones. HTML5 adds many
new features, and streamlines functionality in order to render these
processor-intensive add-ons unnecessary for many common functions.
Assuming content providers sign on (and many are), this means you won't
have to worry about installing yet another plugin just to listen to a
song embedded in a blog or watch a video on YouTube. Similarly, this is a
big deal for platforms that either don't support Flash (e.g., iPhone
and iPad), or have well documented problems with it (e.g., Linux). It
will be a particular boon to those smartphones for which supporting
Flash has proven problematic.
So what exactly can it do?
HTML5's most touted features are media playback and offline storage.
With HTML4, sites usually have to reach for Flash (or Silverlight) to
simply show a video or play music. HTML5 lets sites directly embed media
with the simple
HTML tags
"<video>" and "<audio>" -- no plugins required. There are
some issues currently being debated by the powers that be, and a
particularly sticky one deals with file format. Some companies,
especially
Mozilla, are pushing for the adoption of the open-source
Ogg format, which is free for anyone to use. Others, like Apple, would prefer the higher quality
H.264 format, which will eventually require browser makers to pay licensing fees to support it.
The other major addition that has garnered media attention is the
ability to store offline data for Web apps. One of the major roadblocks
in the march to replace traditional desktop apps has been that the
Web-based ones are useless without an Internet connection. Google
developed a stopgap solution with Gears, but that product
has been retired
as the company is shifting its focus to HTML5. This will mean being
able to create files in Google Docs or draft e-mails when away from an
Internet connection. These changes would be automatically synced the
next time you're online.
HTML5 also adds new interactivity features, like
drag-and-drop, that have already found their way into Gmail.
How can I take advantage of it now?
Most likely, you're already taking advantage of it without knowing.
Safari (both mobile and desktop),
Google Chrome and
Firefox 3.6
all support at least some elements of HTML5. (Internet Explorer 8's
support for HTML5 is very limited.) And many Google products already use
some features of the next-generation protocol. If you're using Safari
or Chrome, you can check out an
experimental version of YouTube that makes use of HTML5's video features. Gmail and
Google Reader have adopted parts of the standard, as well. Additionally, any site listed here as being "
iPad ready"
is making extensive use of HTML5, including The New York Times, CNN and
CBS. The latter of which recently announced it would be
phasing out Flash in favor of HTML5 for all video content. If you want to dig a little deeper, you can check out a series of
experiments from Mozilla that show just what HTML5 can do, and these
design roundups show off what it brings to the table for designers and typographers.
Flash won't be going away anytime soon, of course; it's still widely used and supported, and those
Flash-based games
that we love so much are impossible to recreate using HTML. But it's
important to know that when you hear people tossing about the phrase
"HTML5," it isn't just some meaningless buzz word; they're talking about
the future of the Internet.
You can also see
this
