HTML5 is the biggest leap forward in web standards in the past decade. Unlike previous versions, HTML 5 is not just used to represent Web content. Its mission is to bring the Web into a mature application platform, where video, audio, images, animations, and interactions with computers are all be standardized. Although HTML 5 is still a long way off, HTML 5 is changing the web.
The most recent upgrade to HTML was HTML 4.01, released in December 1999. A lot has happened since then. The original browser wars are over, Netscape is gone, and IE5 is the winner and has since evolved into IE6 and IE7. Mozilla Firefox emerged from the ashes of Netscape and jumped into second place. Apple and Google each launched their own browsers, but Xiaojiabiyu's Opera is still buzzing and alive, and its mission is to promote Web standards. We even have a true web experience on phones and consoles, thanks to Opera, iPhone and, soon, Google's Android.
However, all this has only made the Web standards movement more chaotic. HTML 5 and other standards have been shelved. As a result, HTML 5 has always been shown in the form of a draft.
So, some companies joined together and established an organization called the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), and they will pick up HTML 5 again. This organization is independent of the W3C and has members from Mozilla, the KHTML/Webkit project team, Google, Apple, Opera and Microsoft. Although the HTML 5 draft will not be approved in the short term, HTML 5 is finally here to stay.
What will HTML 5 bring? Here are the most exciting parts of the HTML 5 draft:
A brand new, more reasonable tag. Multimedia objects will no longer be bound to object or embed tags. Instead, videos will have video tags, and audio will have audio tags.
local database. This feature will embed a local SQL database to accelerate interactive search, caching and indexing functions. At the same time, those offline Web programs will also benefit greatly from this.
Rich animations that don’t require plugins. The Canvas object will bring the browser the ability to draw vector graphics directly on it, which means that we can display graphics or animations directly in the browser without Flash and Silverlight. Some of the latest browsers, except IE, already support Canvas.
A real program in the browser. APIs will be provided to enable in-browser editing, drag-and-drop, and various graphical user interface capabilities.
Content modification tags will be removed and CSS will be used instead.
In theory, HTML 5 is the soil for cultivating new web standards, allowing various ideas to be shared among its organizers, but HTML 5 is still in the experimental stage.
Mike Shaver, vice president of technology at Mozilla, said that HTML 5 is a concept with high hopes. It is both the experimental field of the WHATWG organization and the standard path of the W3C.
Shaver believes that Mozilla's interest coincides with the WHATWG experiment. Mozilla is very active in the HTML 5 working group, and we are experimenting with some early details and submitting the mature results to the W3C.
In the past few years, Mozilla has launched multiple forward-looking projects as various new standards emerge, including Prism, a system for running web programs offline, and Weave, a data storage framework.
Shaver said the HTML 5 movement started out of impatience with the W3C, and that much progress in web standards was stalled by the W3C's shift in focus from HTML to XML.
Many new technologies based on XML architecture are designed to replace HTML. Shaver said that this is not the right path, and people should not break it and throw it away like a black blind man breaking a corn handle.
HTML 5’s new experiments are gradually being enhanced in Firefox and Webkit-based Safari and Chrome browsers, but there are still many problems.
Chrome developer Darin Fisher said that Chrome had to face several problems when it was still in its infancy. Although it was using the latest Webkit, the local database function of HTML 5 was not implemented in the early version of Chrome. Because Chrome's sandbox mechanism conflicts with Webkit's database functionality.
Since Chrome is developed secretly, it is inconvenient for Chrome developers to participate in the development of Webkit.
If we want to keep Chrome a secret, we can’t participate in the Webkit community. "We'd love to be able to help Webkit in some way," Fisher said. "We have a lot of experienced developers, and we'd love to know what challenges people are currently experiencing and be happy to help."
With the release of Chrome, Fisher said that his team members would sometimes have dinner with the Webkit people, and some of them became good friends in private. Fisher said they are eager to work with other Webkit development teams to solve the problem of offline databases.
Chrome also contains Google’s open source Gears technology, which is used to implement offline functions similar to HTML 5.
Gears can be seen as a replacement for existing APIs. Fisher said that HTML 5 is a very good thing for new browsers, but the vast majority of users still use old browsers. Gears can make such an API available to older browsers, and we are working on providing compatibility with the HTML 5 version of the API.
Gears compatibility is so good that it's becoming another way to bring HTML 5 to people's desktops.
Currently, most of the work is being carried out by Apple, Mozilla, Opera, Google and Trolltech. What is Microsoft doing? IE is known for its sluggishness towards web standards, let alone HTML 5. But IE8 may change that.
Chris Wilson, chairman of the Microsoft IE Platform and WHAT working group, said in an email that we hope that the work we are starting now can create a test system in the HTML working group. Wilson said the IE development team remains concerned about some of the HTML 5 proposals. I think all members of the working group will acknowledge that we still have a lot to do.
IE8, currently in beta version, already contains many new features of HTML 5. It has a cross-document messaging system, local storage, and some offline events to detect network outages. But there are some features that are not yet on the agenda, such as Canvas.
HTML 5 is very large and is still in the development stage. I think browser manufacturers should reach an agreement as soon as possible, and each browser can choose its own implementation time. Web developers and browser vendors will agree with Wilson that this is definitely an exciting time and we hope to see the Web become the new application platform.
International source of this article: http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/How_HTML_5_Is_Already_Changing_the_Web