Introduction :
HTML5 has been an evolution from the day it hit the web. Everyone wants to talk about HTML5 even without knowing - What HTML5 is, What it is capable of and What do developers need to focus for developing rich HTML5 application for mobile or web platform. Today I would like to answer these questions on my real life experience as a developer working with HTML5 technology from the last couple of years.
Evolution of HTML :
HTML’s update has been very slow in progress for last couple of decades with no much drastic improvements from 1990 – 2010. After the release of HTML 4.01 way backwards in 1999 there wasn't any update for HTML for nearly a decade and people started looking into XHTML 2.0 for development with no backwards compatibility support and its draconian of error handling.
2004 a group of developers from Mozilla and Opera proposed a paper on focusing on developing technologies that are backwards compatible with existing browsers. Finally on 14 February 2011, the W3C extended the charter of its HTML Working Group with clear milestones for HTML5
What's cool about HTML5 and Do we need it???:
There have been lots of potential questions asked by developers who are still pretty much stuck up with the outdated trends of HTML. HTML5 has been able to beat them up with its remarkable features and its potential for creating smarter web applications.
There are quite a few interesting features about HTML5 such as
Backwards Compatible:
Its support for previous versions HTML has kept the developers and organizations safe from updating their web applications. As we might be aware that millions of applications on web are still running on outdated versions of HTML with pretty bad coding practices from developers.
New Semantic Elements:
Introduction of new semantic structural elements such as header, nav, footer, aside, section in HTML5 has led to neat structuring of page content whereas once it was tedious with div container tags.
We also have quite lots of useful semantic elements added on such as Canvas, Audioand also attributes which really makes life easier for developers.
Amazing Built in API’s for building web applications:
HTML5 comes up with amazing set of API’s for building smarter web application such as
Application Cache API, DataTransfer API, Command API, Constraint Validation API,History API, MediaController API, Text Track API, APIs for the text field selections,Canvas 2D Context, Clipboard API and events, Editing APIs, File API, File API: Directories and System, File API: Writer, HTML5 Web Messaging, Indexed Database API, Server-Sent Events, The Web Sockets API, Web Storage, Web Workers,XMLHttpRequest Level 2 and lots more coming in.
In my opinion I consider inclusion of these awesome API’s makes HTML5 sound stronger.
Added support for audio and video:
The support for audio and video in the browser has led to the demolition of external plugins such as Adobe Video Player and similar other popular plugins. Now the audio and video can be inbuilt played in the browser itself which allows the users to avoid the installation of external plugins which can be a threat to leakage of sensitive data as rightly stated by “Steve Jobs” therefore we can say bye bye to the external plugins in the near future.
What isn't HTML5 ?
I have been speaking quite lot about HTML5 features until now but if you start exploring HTML5 features on your own you would be amazed to see that there are quite a lot of exciting features added on to HTML5 which aren’t HTML5 such as Geolocation, CSS3 animations, CSS3 media queries, and many more.You might be wondering what’s going on ?? Why these features are spoken as HTML5 specifications ?? You might be surprised to hear the answer ” Any sort of enhancement to the web is just pushed on to HTML5 since HTML5 has been brand name for organization and developers to promote their work on web”.
What developer needs to focus on ?
Due to the hype created in the market for HTML5, developers go in search of learning HTML5 and keep wondering Where do I need to start from ?? As a developer myself I believe we just need to focus on the evolving technologies such as Javascript, CSS and HTML individually for frontend development on the web with smarter usage of HTML5 , CSS3 exciting features to keep yourself updated and motivated to move ahead.
Final Words:
I hope this piece of information helped you across to refresh your thoughts on HTML5. Thanks and Happy Coding 
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