HTML5 Is Coming

HTML5: What's it all about?

VIPRE Security News November 11, 2011
By Deb Shindler, Contributing Editor

The HyperText Markup Language, or HTML, is the native language spoken on the web. Those of us who are old enough remember when creating a web page meant learning its nuances, and it became second nature to insert tags such as for bold type and to turn the boldface off. Web browsers read those tags and convert them into the formatting you see on web pages. Then along came WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) web editors and a whole generation of casual web designers grew up without having to give HTML a thought.

But over the years, the language was evolving and getting more sophisticated, morphing from a simple language for displaying text and images to a much more complex one supporting cascading style sheets and a variation called XHTML. If you read tech publications, you've probably heard rumblings about HTML5, the latest version. It brings big changes - and some say it can potentially change the web completely. Some folks are excited about that and some - especially web designers who don't want to learn something new - are afraid of it. But what does it mean to you, a "user" of the web?

We've seen the web change from just another Internet application to an application platform. The premise of Google's Chrome operating system is that the web is all you need, and while not everyone is buying that, there's no denying that it plays a bigger role in our computing lives than it did a decade ago. Web sites do much more than just display information now - we can interact with them in real time in a myriad of different ways. We can play games, watch videos, chat, and much more. But all of these new capabilities are built on a variety of different technologies, most of which require you to download additional software or "plug-ins" for your web browser.

Some sites use Sun's Java, some use Adobe's Flash, some use Microsoft's Silverlight. You've probably had the experience of going to a web site that would display on one of your computers but not on another. What HTML5 aims to do (or at least one of the goals) is provide a way for web developers to create sophisticated sites and web applications that will work properly and seamlessly on all browsers and all computers.

You probably heard about Apple's refusal to build Flash support into its Safari browser on the iPhone and iPad, although Adobe recently released v4.5 of its Flash Media Server that allows broadcasters to stream Flash-based video in an Apple format (Flash-based games and animations still won't work). Still, Flash has long been known for its security vulnerabilities, and there has been much talk of HTML5 as a "replacement" for Flash. That's really a misnomer, since Flash, Silverlight, etc. are actually elements that are embedded in an HTML web page so they can easily coexist. The new video element in HTML5 will make it unnecessary to use Flash or Silverlight for basic video, but they may still be used when certain features are needed.
Will HTML5 really change everything? It will make it easier for web designers to make their pages more interactive, because according to one oft-quoted pundit, "In HTML5, an ad is an app, a tweet is an app, everything is an app." For example, instead of having to click a link to go to Amazon to buy a book that's being reviewed on the web page you're reading, you could buy the book directly from inside that page.

Some even say HTML5 could mean the end of the popular social networking sites.

Whatever it brings with it, there's no doubt that HTML5 is the future of the web. Get ready for a wild and wooly ride.

'Til next week,
Deb Shinder, Contributing Editor
-- from an email sent to the blog author by vipresecuritynews@gfi.com ["Vipre" is a small, compact malware and virus protecting software that is updated daily].