HTML 5

HTML is everchanging. Recently the W3C published a working draft for the latest version of HTML -- HTML 5.

This lesson focuses on:

XHTML? HTML? Make up your mind!
Differences between HTML 4 and HTML 5
New tags in HTML 5
Browser support

XHTML? HTML? Make up your mind!

At this point you might be confused. Throughout this section we are talking about XHTML, and now why are we bringing up HTML? As stated before, XHTML is NOT a separate language from HTML. XHTML is the next phase in the evolution of HTML.

The fundamental language used to create webpages is still HTML but now there are stricter rules to it to make it more efficient. HTML has become eXtensible, it is now an eXtensible Hyper Text Markup Language, therefore it is XHTML.

HTML 5 is the next version of HTML. Still very fresh, as the HTML 5 working draft was published by the W3C on January 22nd, 2008.

Differences between HTML 4 and HTML 5

There are several differences between HTML 4 and HTML 5 that should be noted.

Deprecated tags no longer supported

You can still use deprecated tags now, as the popular choice is HTML 4 (which allows deprecated tags). Once HTML 5 becomes the norm, using deprecated tags will be a thing of the past.

HTML 5 will NOT support any of the deprecated tags still supported by HTML 4. This includes (but is not limited to) <center>, <font>, <big>, <small>, and <u>.

NOTE: There is also one standard attribute supported in HTML 4 that will not be supported in HTML 5 -- the accesskey attribute which is used to set a keyboard shortcut to access an element.

New tags in HTML 5

There are several new tags in HTML 5.

<mark>

The <mark> tag is used to highlight parts of text to stand out from the rest of the text.

<audio>

The <audio> tag is used to include audio on a webpage. Audio can range from a simple five second sound to a long and complex song.

<video>

The <video> tag is used to include video on a webpage. Video includes everything ranging from a short five second video to a long movie going for several hours.

NOTE: Currently, you can use either the <embed> tag or the <object> tag for audio and video. The W3C has realized it's more practical to have separate tags for audio and video.

<details>

The <details> tag can be used to describe details about elements on a webpage. The user can click to see these details and hide them if necessary.

<header>

The <header> tag sets a header for a section of a webpage.

New attributes

Not just tags, there are new attributes as well in HTML 5.

disabled attribute for the <fieldset> tag

The <fieldset> tag will contain a disabled attribute that can be used to disable the entire fieldset.

Learn more about the <fieldset> tag at our HTML fieldset/legend tags page.

inputmode attribute for <input> and <textarea> tags

The <input> and <textarea> tags will contain an inputmode attribute that can tell the webpage what kind of user input is expected in such elements.

reversed attribute for the <ol> tag

The <ol> tag will contain a reversed attribute to indicate that a list order should be in reverse.

Browser support

It will be a long time before browsers fully support HTML 5 and it is the norm. This new version of HTML contains many new tags and it is still a working draft. Meanwhile, web developers will continue to use HTML 4 (XHTML) awaiting the glorious day when the new version of the markup language with separate tags for audio, video, page headers, element description, and much more becomes the one that is popularly used.