Is Now the Time to Prepare for HTML5?
It’s coming. The fifth revision of the HTML standard will be finalized by the W3C in 2014. But that doesn’t mean you can’t start benefiting from HTML5 benefits ranging from platform compatibility, cleaner code, and enhanced user interactivity today. With more and more users surfing the web from mobile devices, it makes sense to start using a language that caters to tablet and smartphone users. Here are five reasons you should start preparing for HTML5 so you can stay ahead of the curve.
1
Browser and Device Interoperability
The biggest headache for web developers is designing sites that will view correctly on all browsers. Throw mobile devices into the mix, and it’s become a nightmare. Not so with HTML5. The main thrust of the new HTML standard is “build once, run anywhere.” By building your site to HTML5 standards, you’re guaranteed mobile users of both old and new devices can access your content. Considering how rapidly the mobile market is growing, it makes sense to adapt to HTML5 so these new mobile users can visit your site.
2
No Flash, No Problem
You’ve heard it countless times. Flash is buggy, it uses up too much battery life, and not everything supports it. Apple cut a swath through the Flash community by denying Flash compatibility with iOS, leaving many websites out of the mobile loop. This can all change with HTML5. New video and audio tags were designed for HTML5 to be as simple as the old image tags. Instead of using Flash or Silverlight, developers can use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to render video content, embed multimedia content, and include interactive elements. These new elements are said to perform better too, providing silky smooth playbacks at a fraction of the power consumption.
3
Enabling the Disabled
“Inclusivity” is the theme of HTML5, but this goal goes beyond simply browsers and devices. What about the blind or the deaf users? They’ve been kept out of the loop for too long and now HTML5 hopes to change that. The Web Accessibility Initiative – Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) enables developers to add attribute identifiers or roles to different elements of HTML code. These identifiers mark common regions of the page, such as Title, Header, Footer, and Nav, so disabled users can understand how to navigate your site better.
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