HTML 5, a markup language, is used for structuring and presenting content over the World Wide Web. It is cooperation between, WHATWS which was working on web-forms and applications, and W3C, which was working on XHTML 2.0 at that time. Some features of HTML 5 are:
- The < canvas > tag, which is used to draw 2D objects.
- The < audio > and < video > tags, for media playback on web pages.
- HTML5 supports storage at the local machine.
- Some other content specific elements are introduced, like < article >, < footer >, < nav >, < section > etc.
- New forms controls, like e-mail, calendar, date, time, search etc.
- Provides the Geolocation feature i.e. ability to detect the working location of the user.
- Better error-handling has been introduced to prevent frequent crashes.
- No need to install third-party application or plug-ins to play audio or video on a web-page.
There is a major advantage of HTML 5 over Flash. Flash is a third party platform used by web-designers and developers to make their web-sites, audio and video capable. Flash provides with the fluid like flowing animations on web-pages to make them more attractive and eye pleasing.
But, with HTML 5 introduced, it is deduced that Flash would be rolled out from the scene of technology, not so soon, but with the passage of time. While flash was developed basically for desktop systems, it became difficult for developers to embed flash in mobile web-sites due to the reason that it makes the code for web-site very messy and creates the battery drainage and CPU straining problem for mobile devices.
Now, some advantages of using HTML5 are:
- Compatibility: HTML 5 is supported by nearly all the modern browsers and so there is virtually no restriction on the use of a specific browser for running an application.
- Much Cleaner Code: HTML 5 allows developers and designers to deploy much easier ways to write and analyze the code for a web-page.
- Eye pleasing visuals: Developers can generate much fancier forms and design for web-pages so as to attract as much users as possible to their web-page.
- Easily mobile compatible: HTML 5 provides an easy transformation and compatibility of web-pages with mobile devices, without degrading the features and visual quality of the web-site. It also provides an easy approach to mobile application developers, for designing and developing dynamic sites with fancy animation and with embedded audio and video in pages.
HTML 5 is developed in the period of android, iPad and iPhone development where mobility is the essence of communication. Since it overcomes all the related problems with Flash, mobile app development companies are happy developing for mobile devices. While flash causes touch screen and over-heating problem with mobile devices, HTML 5 is quite mobile friendly, as it does not causes any above mentioned problem and gels well with mobile platforms.