A Guide to HTML5 for Beginners

Understanding the coding terms as a beginner is really tough. People who are still establishing themselves as a web designer find it hard to grasp the word “Mark Up”. Some of them still does not have a clue about this word being different from the popularly known term “code”. Well, Mark Up is a language designed to define, process and present text; tag embedding and text annotations that are carried out in order to make text manipulation easy for the computer. The most commonly used Mark Up language is HTML. A few years ago, there was a release of the latest updated language of HTML known as HTML5. In this blog, we would like to provide you with some insights on the benefits of HTML5 that overrides HTML.

What is HTML?

Hyper-Text Markup Language was developed by W3C or the World Wide Web Consortium during the year 1997. Since then, this language is popularly used by many web developers as the primary language for the website. Most of the web pages available on the internet are coded with this language. With the help of HTML, the web developers are able to ensure the display of text, hyperlink, and multimedia, among other elements in the web browsers. Every element that establishes a connection and implements interaction with your documents are constituents of HTML.

In HTML, the text structures are defined using tags, whereas tags and elements are defined with the help of > and < symbols. These web page contents are rendered through these tags available in the browsers. With every field facing the latest advancement, HTML is not the only web page development standard. The style tags and content that were available during the early days were presented in one huge cumbersome language. With every latest advancement, W3C decided to segregate the style and content of the web pages. This led to the introduction of style sheets. Nowadays, tags that were used for outlining the document’s style has slowly started to get deprecated among the web developers, as most of them started to prefer only the content defining tags and style sheets rather than style tags.

Since the introduction of HTML, it has seen various updates starting from HTML 2.0, HTML 3.2, HTML 4.01, and XHTML 1.0. The latest HTML version that was introduced recently is HTML5. This is also basically a markup language, but this one has added surfeit features to the HTML. This resulted in the eradication of some of the strictness that was experienced in the previous version XHTML 1.0. We are witnessing the addition of new features to HTML5 on a regular basis, but there hasn’t been a new version release yet. The main option that one can benefit from HTML5 is that both audios, as well as videos, can be constituted with this version, which was unavailable until the previous versions. Let us have a quick view on the difference between the other versions of HTML and HTML5.

Incentives of choosing HTML5 over other HTML Versions

One inevitable thing in this field is experiencing periodic changes/updates. HTML falls under this category. HTML5 was introduced by W3C to make the developer’s and the end user’s experience better. As we already discussed, HTML5’s biggest advantage is its innumerous predecessor that can support both high-level audios and videos, which was not possible in the previous versions of HTMLs. Here are some of the other benefits that are associated with the usage of HTML5 rather than other HTMLs.

• Canvas, SVG and other virtual vector graphics were supported in HTML only by using different technologies such as VML, Silver-light, Flash, etc. With HTML5, all the virtual vector graphics are supported in the web pages.
• Usage of web SQL databases, application cache for temporary storing data can be done in HTML5, whereas, only browser cache was used for this purpose under the previous versions of HTML.
• Unlike HTML, HTML5 provides full support to run JavaScript in the background of the web browser. This was not possible in the previous versions of HTML.
• Improved parsing rules for enhanced compatibility since HTML5 is not based on SGML.
• Inline MathML and SVG can be utilized in HTML5, which was not possible in the earlier versions.
• HTML5 supports latest form controls such as email, number, range, URL, search, dates and times, etc.
• Introduction of new elements such as summary, time, audio, data, command, aside, header, article, details, embed, footer, output, nav, meter, mark, keygen, progress, rp, rt, ruby, section, source, track, figcaption, figure, datalist.

Key Advantages of HTML5 for Developers

HTML5 ensured the following rectifications that were the major flaws in the previous versions of HTML.

1. Persistent Error Handling: Usually, most of the browsers support to parse the HTML code even if it is syntactically/structurally incorrect code. Many web developers faced difficulty since there was no standardized process to rectify this situation. This led to the performance of malformed HTML document tests by the new browser developersin different browsers in order to establish an improved version of error handling processes through the prodigies of reverse engineering. This handling of HTML5 errors projected has resulted in a huge difference. This proves to be one of the most beneficial things associated with the updated HTML5 version. In a recent survey, it was found that over 90% of the total websites are subject to incorrectly written code. This update can surely bring a change for the web developers in coding.
2. Better semantics for elements: In this version, HTML has faced various improvements in the semantic roles of the existing elements in order to develop code insinuation. Some of the new elements that have substituted the unwanted div elements are article, nav, header and section. This proved to be a better way of scanning the mistakes in a lesser complicated method.
3. Improved Support for web application features: HTML5’s one of the most important goal was to enable the browsers to function exactly like other application platforms. This update helped the developers attain better control of the performance of their websites. With HTML5, the need for employing any Flash work or JS-based has become evited due to the introduction of certain elements that are built-in HTML5, providing all the required facilities.
4. Easier Mobile Web:Establishing a mobile version for any website has proven to be a headache for many developers. Creating a mobile version of websites required improved HTML standards due to the smartphone’s demographic witnessing exponential proliferation over many years. With HTML5, this process has been a lot simpler by providing the developers with easier options to cater the low-powered electronic devices such as smartphones and tablets.
5. Canvas Element:Introduction of this feature created an immenseeffect on the usage of Adobe Flash. This element can help a developer draw graphics using a variety of shapes and colors using the different scripts (such as JavaScript).
6. Menu Element:Addition of two new elements <menu> and <menuitem> are ingredients of the interactive elements’ specifications, but they are not used by the developers most often. Still, if these items are used properly, it can ensure better interactive website. The <menu> tag can be used to project menu commands in desktop and mobile apps for easier purposes.
7. Modifiable Data Attributes:This option was available in the previous versions too, but there were risks associated along with this option. In order to overcome the risks that were associated with the previous versions, HTML5 has introduced multiple uses for this attribute with the primary motive being the storage of extra information about a variety of elements. This gives the developers an enhanced chance of making the web pages an engaging one in the most efficient way without the need to introduce Ajax calls or server-side lookups.
8. Non-necessity of Cookies:In the previous versions, the developers had to use Cookies in order to store any data. With HTML5, you can use local storage for storing the data. This can release a small amount of data that was previously occupied by Cookies. You can also access the data from anywhere while using scripts.

Perks of HTML5 for End Users

Previously, we witnessed the benefits that developers can attain by using HTML5. Here are some of the benefits that your website visitors can experience if you use HTML5.

• A decrease in the crashing of mobile browsers compared to the native application.
• Enhanced reliance on mobile websites as over 30% of the mobile users detests downloading apps. Now the users can just visit the company’s responsive website in order to use the company’s services instead of logging on.
• Provides the users withaesthetic rich-graphics user experience with the help of HTML5 and other scripts.
• The viewers can view multimedia without any requirement of additional plugins, making it easier for your web users.

The Best Version

A newer version of any language is always better than the previous versions. HTML5 also falls under the same category. With the world facing new updates by every period, the developers find better ways to enhance a better experience for the users and for the other developers. You can definitely expect better versions that can prove to be more human-friendly. However, as far as now is concerned, you can consider HTML5 as an optimal option for your website.

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