The Emergence of HTML 5

HTML 4 has been a staple for nearly a decade now in the Internet world and we find that more than ever, developers are seeking new techniques to provide better functionality. Web developers are feeling held back by the constraints of the current language and browsers and are ready for more powerful tools. This is becoming more of an issue with the proliferation of smartphones that is creating an even greater need for smartphone friendly tools.

While tools like jQuery have helped, they have not provided the shift that many web developers are looking to find. On top of that, the Internet and web design are fields where things we learn today can be out-of-date tomorrow, only further pushing the need for a shift to a more robust tool.

HTML 5 introduces a complete set of new fundamentals that make it much easier to structure pages and develop high power web sites that are more smartphone friendly. Most HTML 4 web pages contain a variety of common structures, such as headers, footers and columns and more recently it is almost universal to mark them up using div elements, giving each a descriptive id or class.

To give authors more flexibility, and allow more interactive and exciting websites and applications, HTML 5 introduces and enhances a wide range of features including form controls, APIs, multimedia, structure, and semantics. These tools will usher in a new era of web development with a bold vanguard of web designers at its forefront leading the way.