The HTML4 standard hasn’t seen a major update for the large majority of its life, even with the release of the XHTML standard. The new HTML5 standard which has been under development since 2004 is now surfacing, with a larger support with modern browsers (including IE9!!).
Here are some of the new features and elements to HTML5:
Audio & Video
<audio> <video>
The audio and video element allows you to easily embed videos and audio without the need for flash or complicated object tags while retaining certain simple features like autoplay and loop. A great example of where this is being used is: http://www.dailymotion.com/openvideodemo it doesn”t use flash only HTML5, JS and CSS3.
Structure
<header> <nav> <article> <aside> <section> <footer>
These structural elements are a great way to slove the over use of divs (divitis?) and classes which are always used to the excess in modern HTML.
Canvas
<canvas>This is a javascript controlled drawing area allowing you to make graphs and graphics easily. A example of the canvas element with RGraph can be found at http://www.phpguru.org/static/canvas.html.
Document Type & Charset
<!DOCTYPE html>
This replaces the huge old doctypes (e.g. html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN”) which are massive and difficult to remember. I can honestly say that I can remember this new HTML5 DOCTYPE which is brilliant, and the way it should be.
<meta charset="UTF-8" />
There have been a few different charset meta tags floating around the internet lately but this is the one I HTML5 version I have chosen, mainly because it passes the W3C Validation.
Outdated
<acronym> <basefont> <center> <font> <frame> <strike> <u>
All of these elements are deemed outdated and have been removed, mainly because there is a better or more efficient way of doing them.
Is the world ready for HTML5?
Well, it is getting there. With recent progressions in the browser industry a hand-full of these tags are now supported but still only with the latest versions. So if you are considering developing a new site, HTML5 is still a long way from main stream. But with a little help from Javascript it can be fully implemented on nearly all browsers, See This Script
Image by: churl on flickr
Additional Resources:
http://www.phpguru.org/static/html5
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/previewofhtml5/
http://webdesign.about.com/od/html5/a/html_5_whats_new.htm
http://css-tricks.com/snippets/html/html5-page-structure/
Great intro article, thanks