HTML 5. Is it ready?
By menno schaaf, developer
HTML 5 is the next language for structuring and presenting content online. As the previous standards of HTML 4 and XHTML 1.1 were introduced over 10 years ago, HTML 5 represents the next step in displaying rich video, music, image and dynamic content online.
HTML 5 is being developed for a number of reasons, the most notable ones include introducing new elements such as the <video>, <audio> and <canvas> which deal with video, audio and imagery content, without having to resort to third party plug ins such as Adobe Flash Player; other new elements enhance the semantic content of the page, defining things such as headers, navigation, sections and articles – these sit hidden in the code, but provide meaningful information to search engines and their interpretation of your content.
However, whilst this does sound great, it should be pointed out that HTML 5 is a draft. It hasn’t been ratified as standard, and because of this it’s support is somewhat limited to the newest versions of most browsers – and even they don’t fully support the current draft. HTML 5 has been around since 2008, and it’s only now that proper support in browsers is starting to be built. If you want to see most of the current HTML 5 rich pages, you’ll need to use Firefox 4, Safari 5, Chrome 10 or Internet Explorer 9, and even then support for a particular page that uses that one little feature might not exist in your browser.
There are, in spite of this, a number of large sites that do serve HTML 5 code. The two biggest ones are www.google.com and www.apple.com, who by using features that don’t interfere with older browsers interpretation of the code manage to keep the cross browser functionality that is important to such large sites. In limited use, HTML 5 is ready to be used on your webpage, but if you want rich animated graphics or videos without having to support third party plug ins for your sites viewers, it’s probably best to wait until support picks up.
However, whilst this does sound great, it should be pointed out that HTML 5 is a draft. It hasn’t been ratified as standard, and because of this it’s support is somewhat limited to the newest versions of most browsers – and even they don’t fully support the current draft. HTML 5 has been around since 2008, and it’s only now that proper support in browsers is starting to be built. If you want to see most of the current HTML 5 rich pages, you’ll need to use Firefox 4, Safari 5, Chrome 10 or Internet Explorer 9, and even then support for a particular page that uses that one little feature might not exist in your browser.
There are, in spite of this, a number of large sites that do serve HTML 5 code. The two biggest ones are www.google.com and www.apple.com, who by using features that don’t interfere with older browsers interpretation of the code manage to keep the cross browser functionality that is important to such large sites. In limited use, HTML 5 is ready to be used on your webpage, but if you want rich animated graphics or videos without having to support third party plug ins for your sites viewers, it’s probably best to wait until support picks up.
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