Wednesday, 25 February 2015

HTML5: New Standard for Web Development.

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014  this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardized in 1997.

Its core aims have been to improve the language with support for the latest multimedia while keeping it easily readable by humans and consistently understood by computers and devices (Web Browsers, Parser etc.). HTML5 is intended to subsume not only HTML4 but also XHTML 1and DOM Level 2 HTML.

Web Development is of at most importance as it is the process of building a website. It comprises of designing, coding, and maintenance. Since Internet started to dominate the world culture, business habit, academic and many other things, it has become a trend and a necessity to own a website. The site is a basic minimum requirement to have a online presence. As online presence also means a functional gains.It is not a choice to have a website.

HTML4, the popular HTML is still mostly used for web programming but it is quickly getting replaced by all new HTML5. HTML4 was introduced in 1999 which makes it a decade old technology and often unsuitable for modern needs. Developed by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) together, this attempts to bridge the gap between the web development needs and technology available.

Let us point out to a few new trends which HTML5 has brought forth.


General Differences between HTML5 and HTML4
Following are some of the major characteristics that distinguish HTML5 from HTML4

1. Simplified and Clear Syntax
The syntax in HTML5 is extremely clear and simple as compared to HTML4. One example of this is the DOCTYPE element. In HTML4 the DOCTYPE declaration was too messy and lengthy and used to refer an external source. However in HTML5 DOCTYPE element has been made extremely simple. For instance a mere <!DOCTYPE html> is enough to specify the document type.

2.More Descriptive Schematics
The original goal of HTML was to develop a language that could describe the structure of a document. As the web grew, developers realized that oftentimes they were describing the same types of elements. For example...a header, a footer, nav, articles, sections, etc. HTML5 recognizes where the language has developed and incorporates those elements into the language with new tags for that type of content.

3. Multimedia Elements
HTML5 contains built in support for integrated multimedia files into web page via video and audio tags. Previously, in HTML4, the multimedia content was integrated in web pages via third party plugins such as Silverlight and flash.

4. Accessing User Geographical location
Previously in HTML4, it was an extremely cumbersome task to get the geographical locations of the visitors visiting the site. It was even difficult when the website was accessed through mobile devices. On the other hand, in HTML5 is extremely easy to get the user location. HTML5s JS GeoLocation can be leveraged to identify the location of the user accessing the website.

5. Client Side storage
In HTML4, in order to store important data on client side, browsers cache was used. However, that cache is limited and doesnt support relational storage mechanism. In HTML5, this issue has been addressed via Web SQL database and application cache that can be access via HTML5s JavaScript interface.

6. Client Server Communication
In HTML4 the communication between the client and server was done through streaming and long polling, since there are no web sockets available in HTML4. On the contrary, HTML5 contains web sockets that allow full duplex communication between clients and servers.

7. JavaScript Threading Mechanism
In HTML4, JavaScript and the browser interface with which user interacts, run in the same thread which affects performance. HTML5 contains JS Web Worker API which allows JavaScript and Browser interface to run in separate threads

8. Browser Compatibility
As mentioned, HTML4 is an established standard for developing browser applications and has been in use for more than 10 years. For this reason, HTML4 is compatible with almost all web-browsers. On the other hand, HTML5 is still in the process of evolution and the currently available tags are being modified and also new tags are being added. Therefore, HTML5 lags behind HTML4 in terms of compatibility with the browsers.

HTML5 comes with some major improvements. Some of them are as follows.
  • HTML, CSS, DOM and Javascript based new features.
  • Improved image, video and audio handling.
  • Self dependent error handling.
  • Device independent setting enabling universal access
  • Scripting is replaced using markups

HTML5 Browser Support

Often We have seen that our effort has no any value, when the browser doesn’t support the element of HTML5. Somehow most of the updated browsers are supporting the HTML5 element, But still this is a huge problem for individuals to play with HTML5 on all of Internet browsers.
At the initial stage of HTML5 development very few browsers were able to display the data properly. But now by dint of days and nights toil of various HTML5 development platforms, the most updated browsers are supporting HTML5 tags or elements.

Still the main issue with Internet Explorer, which is suffering from not proper rendering. Although Microsoft has lunched the 11th version also, and a working draft has been introduced of 12th version also. But still HTML5 is running with more advance features and that’s not compatible with old browsers.

Below is chart showing the ratings for HTML5 browser compatibility or support


HTML5 Best Practices
  • Minimize HTTP requests a)CSS Sprites b)Image Mapping c)Inline Images
  • Add Expire Use of content delivery network(CDN).
  • ES or  cache-controlled header
  • Style sheets on the top and Scripts at the bottom.
  • Avoid CSS expressions
  • Make JavaScript and CSS external file
  • Reduce DNS lookup
  • Minify JavaScript and CSS files
  • Avoid redirects
  • Avoid nested tables
  • Preload Components
  • Reduce the number of DOM elements
  • Minimize the usage of the  number of Iframes
  • Make Ajax cacheable
The technology is evolving as well, From the static webpages built in HTML, now we are having responsive websites, which can reshape itself intelligently depending on the devices which are fetching them, built using "fluid grid technology

These Improvements are huge and when implemented fully, these are expected to change the way the web development is done. As most of the companies are adopting and welcoming the new technology. We can surely hope for a better future which a cumulative effort can bring


HTML5 is an emerging standard of web development which is getting quickly popular among web developers and users alike. The inbuilt features make it much more suitable to address the needs of present day computing which is not well handled by old HTML4.

About the author:
Milind Bibodi is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, he actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. He can be contacted at milind.b@spluspl.com

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