AUTHOR: Dewzilla | 10 MINUTE READ
HTML5 Basics
February 14, 2020
February 14, 2020
The days when website development was a pain in the neck are gone. Today’s professional web design software enables you to create web templates in an instant click.
Read our quick guide on HTML5 and learn how it differs from the previous versions.
Contents
Hypertext Markup Language revision 5, or simply HTML5 is the latest programming language of browsers developed to display and modify web pages. HTML5 gives format and interactivity to a website and intends to solve compatibility problems that affect the old standard, HTML4.
In 2007, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) bounded with WHATWG to realize their ambitions in HTML evolution. Together, they formed HTML WG to create HTML5. HTML5 was made public on 22 January 2008. The objective was to improve the language readability and make it a complete platform, functioning without XHTML’s rigidity.
HTML5 incorporates two other kinds of code which are JavaScript and CSS, all rolled in one; but the plan for underlying website structure is first defined in HTML code. The code has an extended markup and improved APIs with support for the latest web browsers. Additionally, Drag and Drop integration eases the process of setting up a website requiring little programming skills. This also allows HTML5 to be used on handheld devices in an attempt to create mobile versions of a webpage.
One of the biggest differences between HTML5 and previous versions is the ability to connect things on the Internet. It’s just that now, we’re starting to realize the great potential of HTML; with the advent of audio and video elements, additional software like browser plugin has become the thing of the past. There’s more. As mentioned above, HTML5 is cross-platform, which means it can be useful for writing web apps that are highly functional offline.
The main changes include:
The major update to HTML5 markup is new tags. Their advantage lies in the ability to describe the intent of the containing markup in a clear-cut way. This means that pages that contain inherent content will be better displayed in search engines and easily interpreted by the client. Therefore, the ultimate goal of tags is to give a build-in meaning to the code which in turn delivers a more applicable website.
HTML5 also supports Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) in text/html, a comprehensive dialect of XML used to describe both structure and content. It is just now, website owners can update their sites, rather than bringing on outside Flash programmers.
The result is that the latest version of the program is now considered a highly functional tool available for web content, and you’ll hear more about HTML5 than ever before. Further, the audio and video elements function more like an element that drops the link into a page. It always was and always will be about interconnection. As noted earlier, the audio and video files that play in a browser would play natively in the HTML5-enabled handheld device.
<video width=”450px” height=”350px” controls>
<source src=”video-url.mp4″type=”video/mp4″>
</video>
If the large portion of improvements goes to markup upgrade, the rest is represented by the new JavaScript APIs. According to W3C, HTML5 intends to replace APIs in older HTML4, XML, and DOM Level 2 documents. Sure, this isn’t anything technically new, but it is something that’s happening more due to the introduction of HTML5 multimedia elements and the extension of hypertext allowing the provision of these elements. Programmers are now able to throw it on a content-sharing medium like YouTube or Vimeo.
In the early days of the World Wide Web, browsers were poised for growth. Each browser vendor, in an attempt to compete for dominance in the usage share, struggled to implement advanced features using proprietary APIs. Microsoft and Netscape at the time were creating features that would compete with the other browser. Sometimes their attempts would have ended up in the creation of two identical sites for the two main browsers or they would simply focus on supporting only one browser and limiting access to the website.
The rising influence of the Web Standards Project had decided the war at a stroke, as they introduced standardized APIs.
The following are two platforms that provide actual browser support tables and usage share statistics for modern web technologies.
Though HTML5 is an evolving standard, the latest versions of big-name browsers support it. But they don’t all support the same things. Chrome has the highest level of compatibility with the software, and generally supports a broad selection of HTML5 features, with Maxthon and Opera following afterwards.
The HTML5demos.com gives a simple, short, and clear explanation for HTML structure and scripts. The excellent Google Web Fundamentals Program has both demos and code samples for web developers. The process does not differ radically from methods followed with previous versions of HTML; it begins with defining HTML5 doctype and head sections layout that requires conscious determination.
<!DOCTYPE HTML>
Note that the first line, the HTML5 doctype, is required when using the new HTML5 elements. Proceed with metadata. Define the document title, character set, scripts, and other meta information. These are the parts of the webpage that inform other search engines what a site is about, what the keywords are, whether search bots can index it etc. Set up the <head> element for metadata. It is important to add the following two declarations to the CSS <style> section in the page head. Do not waste your time and effort trying to fill out tags that can languish your website.
<html>
<head>
<title>HTML5 Demo</title>
<style type=”text/css”>
</style>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
A programmer should also be considering a design that would work on all kinds of devices.
When working with web design, it is helpful to consider both the designer and programmer perspectives; it benefits the analysis of the small modifications regarding both parties vision. Also considering the user encourages a user-centered design.
As you could have noticed, the names of the HTML5 tags have inherent meaning e.g the <header> element indicates the page header. The header often contains one or more heading tags (up to h6). The following is an example of these tags being used in the <body> section of your page:
<header>
<h1>Dewzilla Blog</h1>
<div>Catch up on all the latest articles.</div>
</header>
Not long ago, <div> elements were the only option for structuring block-level pages. In order to use these elements, developers would apply id and class attributes e.g., <div id=”header”> and <div id=”footer”>. Using an id attribute allows you to indicate semantic meaning and the purpose of your code.
We can position a website <footer> using the same techniques:
<footer>
<p>This site is produced by Great Sites Inc.</p>
</footer>
Footers typically contain important website data such as copyright information (to protect your website from plagiarism), a sitemap, a disclaimer, images or links to relevant resources. Links may use text or image as an anchor, and areas inside an image can lead to different URLs.
We have talked through the two essential elements of the document tree. Now we’ll discuss the navigation section. The <nav> element represents a section of a page that provides internal or external links. Common examples of navigation sections are menus, tables of contents, and indexes
Again, the nav element can contain additional features. Using this element lets you indicate its function or purpose, as with header and footer.
<nav>
<ul>
<li><a href=”#”>Technology</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Business</a></li>
<li><a href=”#”>Entertainment</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>
To sum up, if you are willing to create a responsive website, you should consider the latest version of HTML language. This means you’ll need to develop basic skills of CSS and JS and determine the language purpose i.g., which one to use. Today’s tech-savvy specialists consider HTML5 to be one of the major web building trends. Even though some of the features remain “deprecated”, HTML5 is an exciting markup language for creating new browser-based applications; it includes features designed with low-powered devices in mind. In addition to specifying markup, HTML5 defines APIs that can be used with JavaScript. The technology stack benefits video and audio manipulation have extended section elements that can be used to organize web page content into thematic groups.