HTML5 is the latest version of the HTML markup language that has provided incredible benefits to web developers. Using HTML5, you can design and develop websites and web applications with the best quality and complex features. Therefore, HTML5 has become one of the most important web development tools, to the point where website design today is meaningless without it.
In this article, we will talk about HTML5 comprehensively and practically.
Table of Contents
What is HTML?
HTML markup language stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and is the basis of a website’s pages. As a result, familiarity with HTML is considered the alphabet of website programming. To program the site with HTML, a series of tags are used. These tags make the skeleton of the site by being placed next to each other and putting different elements of the page together.
Of course, HTML has not been as perfect as it is today and has traveled a long and ups and downs path to reach its current version, HTML5.
What is HTML5?
HTML5 is the latest version of the HTML markup language that is used to create websites and web applications. Using HTML5, developers can design websites with more features and be more user-friendly. HTML5 supports technologies that finally open the hands of programmers and site developers for complex and excellent site design. In addition, you can design attractive websites by using HTML5 along with programming languages such as PHP, JavaScript, and CSS3.
The difference between HTML and HTML5
Before HTML5, its older version, HTML4, was at work. However, HTML4 had many limitations. The first limitation of HTML4 was that if the site designer or programmer wanted to add a specific format of content (for example, video content) or a specific feature to the site, he had to use dedicated but non-standard tools.
To use that feature, users had to install special plugins on their browsers to be able to access the dynamic content of the website. However, sometimes these plugins did not work properly or were not available for many users. For example, to watch the video on the site, the Adobe Flash plugin had to be installed on the browser. Of course, iPhone and iPad users could not use this plugin because their devices did not support Flash at all!
With the arrival of HTML5, the need for programmers and site designers as well as users for special tools and numerous plugins disappeared. HTML5 provided a wide range of features and facilities to design and program the site in the best possible way.
HTML5 features
HTML5 has several distinct features:
- Facilitating code readability for users, programmers, and even screen readers.
- Reducing overlap between HTML, CSS, and JavaScript codes,
- Improving responsiveness and design coordination between browsers,
- Support for playing multimedia systems without the need to install plugins or extensions.
For these features to happen in HTML5, it was necessary to implement the following changes in the HTML markup language.
New semantic elements
One of the important changes in HTML5 compared to its older versions is the introduction of several new tags. Some of these important tags are:
- <header>
- <section>
- <footer>
- <figure>
- <nav>
- <mark>
- <aside>
- <figcaption>
- <data>
- <time>
- <output>
- <progress>
- <meter>
- <main>
These tags help the developer to go through the programming process more easily and write more readable and cleaner code.
Inline SVG
SVG stands for “Scalable Vector Graphics” and is used as a vector format for images and provides the possibility of designing dynamic and dynamic images and charts on the web. Because SVG uses vectors to create images, images can be displayed at any size, large or small, without loss of quality.
SVG is also used to create icons and web designs that display at different sizes. SVG is one of the HTML5 tags. This HTML5 tag makes it easy to change the shape, size, and dynamics of SVG images using CSS and JavaScript.
New features for creating forms
Thanks to the new features provided by HTML5, we can now have more diverse and intelligent options in form design. These attributes include time, local time, date, month, week, time range, email, and URL.
In addition, with the help of an Attribute or placeholder characteristic, you can put a default value in a form so that the user knows exactly what information to enter when filling out the form.
WebM format support
Before HTML5, it was necessary to install a plugin to play audio or video on the web. But HTML5 introduced the <audio> and <video> tags, eliminating the need to install a browser extension. HTML5 also supports the WebM format. The format developed by Google is of high quality.
One-way messages or Server-Sent Events
One-way messages, or SSE, mean that the website page is updated automatically. In the old version of HTML, this was not possible. That is, to update a page, an update request had to be sent to the server manually.
But in HTML5, data is continuously sent from the server to the browser. This is very useful for websites whose content, such as prices and news, changes quickly.
Local web storage
In the old version of HTML, data was stored locally in cookies. But in HTML5, local web memory is used instead of cookies. Local web storage stores site data locally just like a cookie, with the difference that the size of the web memory is much larger compared to a cookie.
History of HTML and its conversion to HTML5
The history of HTML5 dates back to 2004. When a group of website design and programming experts from major companies including Apple, Mozilla, Opera, and Microsoft decided to add new features and facilities to HTML. This project was introduced in 2006 as HTML5 and was widely developed in the following years.
In 2014, W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) officially approved HTML5. This meant that HTML5 was approved as an official standard for developing websites and web applications. Since then, HTML5 has become one of the most important web development tools and is used in many websites and web applications.
Advantages of designing a website with HTML5
Using HTML5 in website design has many advantages compared to previous versions. Some features of this version were mentioned in the previous section. In this section, some other advantages of using HTML5 in website design are mentioned.
Compatible with all browsers
All browsers including Opera, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome support HTML5. Even older browsers like Internet Explorer are HTML5 compatible. This means that site owners can be sure that all users in the world will have access to the site and its content with any browser.
The possibility of offline surfing on the web
HTML5 allows you to use website content offline. HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, and all website resources are stored locally in the cache. When the user is offline, this saved information is displayed to the user offline.
Easier and more readable programming
Thanks to the new semantic tags and elements in HTML5, the amount of coding becomes much shorter. For example, to create a simple menu in HTML4, several nested tags had to be used, which ultimately made the code structure complicated to read. The use of tags and new semantic elements in the codes, in addition to shortening the length of the code, improves its readability.
How to use HTML5?
It’s been a long time since HTML5 hit the market. As a result, the HTML5 version is used in all the sites of the world today.
Even websites built on a content management system or CMS like WordPress use HTML5 by default.