Before we start talking about HTML5, it is necessary to first discuss little bit of HTML. Well, HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is a type of code that can be easily read by your web browser in order to display web pages properly. There was a time when developers were completely relying on HTML for preparing web documents and although as the time has passed and technology has evolved there wasn’t really any significant improvement in the basic HTML technology. This encouraged the developer’s team to come up with necessary improvements in this language that could be good to increase the website usability and performance which eventually resulted in the birth of HTML5.
HTML5 is a new version of HTML 4.1 and XHTML 1.0 focusing on the features which makes website building process even faster. HTML5 is still a work in progress but possibly HTML5 would get the green single from W3C in July 2014.
HTML5 has so many new syntactical features such as <audio>, <video> and <canvas> elements. As a result of these new features, it will be very easy to integrate multimedia and graphic content in website using the third party plugins. There are few other considered elements like <article>, <header>, <nav> and <section> which will improve the semantic value of the document.
Search Engine Friendly
Using flash to embed video on website is often loved by web developers. But search engines think differently. Major robot crawlers find it very hard to read the content available in flash video. Without the support of SWFobject technology, search engines are clueless about video on website. But HTML5 <video> tag has changed the entire scenario and now with <video> tag you can embed video in your website as easy as like adding an image – no flash required.
With HTML5 developers can get lot of new elements and tags that help to improve SEO. Defining the content types using different attributes is one of the key steps to improve the search ranking of web pages. For instance, we need to define whether the block of content is heading, paragraph, price and address etc. This will help search engine to understand the content available on the page which ultimately results into fast indexing of web pages because search engines like to index the web pages that follow clean and clear structure.
Audio and Video Support
As mentioned above web developers used to depend a lot for embedding videos on website through flash, Flex, Silverligh and JavaScript tools. But HTML5 has been completely eradicated this comlexity and it has become extremely easy for developers to embed video and audio files using <audio> and <video> tag. Using HTML5 web developers can embed high quality videos, audio, high definition pictures, animation and charts and much more multimedia features easily without help of any third party plugins.
Clean and Improved Code
HTML5 enable web designers to use neat and clear code. Many div tags can be removed using semantic HTML5 elements.
Enhanced Accessibility
If you really want your site to reach broad audience, you will need to design your site for easy accessibility. HTML5 is talented enough to improve website accessibility.
It does it in 2 ways – using semantics and ARIA.
Semantic HTML means HTML tags used in web page that describes the meaning of content rather than its presentation. The decoration of content will go in CSS section.
ARIA is a part of W3C WAI (Web Accessibility Initiative) which is used to make sure web content should be accessible easily. ARIA is used for improving the accessibility of dynamic content and advanced UI controls which are developed using HTML, JavaScript, AJAX and HTML and other related technologies.
Smarter Local Storage
Website cannot work without internet connection. But with HTML5, data can be stored in browser that means you can continue to perform your work, place orders and filling up form which can be sync up when you are online later.
Mobile Ready
As we can notice a rapid increase in mobile devices usage for internet browsing, adopting HTML5 technology will make your website mobile ready. As Adobe announced the death of mobile flash, HTML5 could be perfect option to make your website mobile browsing compatible. As mobile browsers have fully supported HTML5, in that case creating website mobile ready is become so easy.
Sem Jacobs is a expert front end developer who has successfully delivered above 100+ PSD to HTML conversion projects. He has excellent coding technique and write own code which ensures bug free, pixel perfect and quality web solutions.
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