Today we take a few steps back
and take a look at some of the differences between HTML 4 and HTML5. This
is intended to be a useful overview, not an exhaustive reference, but
remember that things are still and always changing. We can’t deny the fact that HTML4 is the most successful
markup language in the history of Internet ever. HTML5 builds on that
revolutionary success. To start coding with HTML5, you don’t need to change the
way you used to code in HTML4. With HTML5 you have new semantic elements,
direct support for audio, video and a cool new canvas feature.
The first thing
you should know is that, perhaps for the first time, the development of a
language standard is acknowledging the real world. In order to keep file
compatibility with the current standard - which is technically HTML 4.01 - the
brave decision was made to separate the way the web browser renders files from
the way we, as developers, must write them.
So the browser, or “user agent”,
must still process HTML4 constructs like the center element, because there will
still be millions of files on the Internet that happen to use it. But we won’t
be writing any more HTML with center; it’s simply being dropped from the
language (use CSS instead). This compatibility goes both ways: older browsers
can (and will) simply ignore HTML5 code without screwing things up.
The elements
frame, frameset, and noframes are being removed from the language, as well as
acronym, applet, basefont, big, blink, center , dir, font, isindex, strike , tt
and u. All of these can be handled using CSS or other methods.
You’ll also have
to learn to get along without using tables for layout; while tables themselves
are still part of HTML5, they’re not intended for placing pixels any more.
Here’s what the spec says:
"Tables must not be used as layout aids. Historically, some Web authors have misused tables in HTML as a way to control their page layout. This usage is non-conforming, because tools attempting to extract tabular data from such documents would obtain very confusing results."
So all the
attributes that let people create those perfectly laid-out, tinted tables are
gone, like align, bgcolor, border, cellpadding, cellspacing, height, nowrap,
rules, valign, and the big one: width.
Browsers of the
future will become more powerful because of the move towards the cloud, so that
they’ll be able to handle more on their own. We’ve already seen that with
things like Ajax, and now with video/audio embedding and such, it will be far
easier for us to code in a straightforward manner and let the browser figure
out the details. For instance, new structure elements include article, aside,
figcaption, figure, footer, header, hgroup, nav, section, and summary, all of
which refer to the structure of the document itself and leave rendering to the browser.
Key Features
- HTML4 was developed by World Wide Web consortium and WHATWG (web hypertext application technology working group) and HTML5 is being developed by web hypertext application technology working group (WHATWG) and W3C HTML WG.
- HTML5 brings in new elements to structure the web pages as compared to HTML4 which uses common structures such as: – header, columns etc. These new elements are: header, nav, section, article, aside, and footer.
- Now, each of these elements
serves a unique purpose:-
Header denotes the inclusion of heading, sub headings etc. which is
more specific.
Nav signifies both the website navigation as well
as the navigation of the table of contents.
Section element corresponds to a broad category of a
web page.
Article element symbolizes a particular section of
web page such as: blog, news, testimonials etc.
Aside element is used to include the content that
may relate to a specific section of a document or a web page.
Footer element is used to indicate important
information like copyright data, the author’s name, links to other pages etc.
- HTML5 brings a whole new dimension to web world. It can embed video on web-pages without using any special software like Flash.
- Not only videos, HTML5 is said to be capable of playing video games on the browser itself.
- HTML5 is considered to be flexible to handle inaccurate syntax. HTML5 specifies the rules related to the parsing and lexing as compared to HTML4. This means that even if there is an incorrect syntax, similar result is produced by various complaint browsers.
- Furthermore, HTML5 denotes to scripting of API (application programming interfaces) including new APIs like:-
ü Drag and drop
ü Database storage offline
ü Editing of the document
ü Canvas 2D APIs, etc.
- HTML4 supports the ‘tag soup’ i.e. the ability to inscribe malformed code and get them accurately on the document. But there are no written rules or guidelines for doing this. This implies that malformed documents are to be tested on various browsers. To tackle this issue, HTML5 is being developed in such a way so that the developers need not waste their time and efforts in creating an error free web page.
- Unlike its predecessor, HTML5 also includes many new tags and also new names for older tags with extra features like: local storage wherein a lot of information can be stored, JS-based hacks or Flash, validation form etc. so as to make the applications easy for the developers and speedier for the users.
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