Why should web designers start looking at HTML 5 and what are the advantages it can bring to our work? In this short blog post we run through a few of the many advantages we can gain from latest incarnation of HTML.
HTML 5 is a new version of HyperText Markup Language, the language or code us web designers use to create web pages. HTML 4 has been in existence for nearly a decade and given the pace at which things move in the web design world it’s long overdue an update.
The W3C have announced that they will be ceasing any further development of XHTML 2 at the end of this year in favour of putting more resources into the development of HTML 5, which has gained much more momentum in terms of web design community backing and encouraging browser support.
Web design must be pretty high up the leader board in terms of the industry with the most acronyms and abbreviations. So it’s great to know we have a new one; POSH or Plain Old Semantic HTML has been coined with the intention to make semantic HTML cool and interesting again. The gripe is that the web design community is getting really excited about AJAX and Microformats but Plain Old Semantic HTML hasn’t been invited to the party.
With the advent of Web 2.0 and AJAX the way in which users interact with web pages has changed. Techniques such as AJAX mean that pages can update without having to be refreshed. Whilst this has been a great asset to web design and has really catapulted the industry forward in terms of user experience one area has definitely suffered and that is Web Accessibility.