Technology Review
The new standard will make Web apps more powerful and less buggy.
HTML5, the next version of the markup language used to build Web pages, has attracted attention for its ability to show video inside a Web browser without using plug-ins, such as Adobe's Flash. But lesser-known features could ultimately have a much bigger impact on how users experience the Web.
Experts say that what HTML5 does behind the scenes--such as its network communications and browser storage features--could make pages load faster (particularly on sluggish mobile devices), make Web applications work more smoothly, and even enable browsers to read older Web pages more easily.
Many websites now act like desktop applications--Web-based office productivity suites and photo-editing tools, for example. But many of the sophisticated features of these sites depend on connections that developers create between different Web technologies, such as HTML, javascript, and cascading style sheets (CSS)--connections that don't always work perfectly. As a result, websites can be sluggish, may work differently from browser to browser, and can be vulnerable to security holes.
Bruce Lawson, who evangelizes about open Web standards at Opera Software, says that to make websites perform functions the Web wasn't originally designed for, developers must perform complex coding tasks that can easily introduce errors and make applications fail.
The group working on HTML5, Lawson says, was given the tall order of making the specification more forgiving than its predecessors so that older or improperly coded websites will work better in HTML5-enabled browsers. They also wanted to extend the specification forward to support modern trends such as rich Internet applications. "The basis of HTML5 is relentlessly pragmatic," he says. "It's designed to reflect what people are actually doing."
Experts point to a feature called Web Sockets as an example of the improvements that HTML5 can offer. Web Sockets provide a website with an application programming interface (API) that opens an ongoing connection between a page and a server, so that information can pass between them in real-time. Normally, the browser has to make a request every time it wants an update.
The effect of Web Sockets is something like moving from having a conversation via e-mail to having it via instant message, says Ben Galbraith, who cofounded the Web development site Ajaxian.com, and is director of developer relations at Palm. With e-mail, each message is sent as a single event, while instant messages allow for a smooth, ongoing conversation.
Visual WebGui makes an application accessible via the Web without altering its code.
Websockets lets the Web handle complex communications in real time.
IBM builds a search engine aimed at the estimated fifth of the world's population that cannot read.
If the rumor is true that Google is adding page-load speed to its algorithm, then HTML 5 should improve page rank on sites using the new standard.
Hi Praxius--
That's not a rumor. Google has officially announced that it has incorporated site speed into its ranking algorithm. See the company blog here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html
I can testify that Google will punish you for slow loading pages. I wasn't pooling my SQL connections, which resulted in a 3x increase in page load time. My traffic from Google was cut in half for a week afterwards.
Any innovative improvement that
targets advanced sophistication
in web design,structure,
functionality and freely user
applications of choice, stands
to gain world wide overwhelming
endorsement from free minded
computer and internet savy
users,if and only if, there
exists no underlying element
of corporate monopoly.
..kudos to folks behind the moves !!
Martin Atayo
(Technologist)
I like how the HTML5 logo conveniently leaves out IE; hate it or love it even at IE's worse it still commands half the web market share, and that's after surviving Vista. If you're a web developer, then you know it's vital to keep an eye on what IE especially does with your site, since most of you're professional clients will likely be using some version of it (or Safari, but it typically behaves, with a few quirks of it's own). Another point to consider is that if HTML5 makes pages browser independent and identical, that will only help IE/Safari, since users wont need to install another browser.
What's Opera at these days anyway, 2.005%? and poor Safari btw, Chrome yawns, and it manages to pass them up.
/rant
PS:
'The basis of HTML5 is relentlessly pragmatic," he says. "It's designed to reflect what people are actually doing.'
So it's designed to play Petville and stream Youtube videos?
I hate to say it, but HTML5 seems like it's written by geeks for geeks... The average person doesn't care if their browser has to use flash and ajax calls or sockets; they just want to look at lolcats and take care of their farm.
Still, an exciting time to be a web developer.
It seems to me (and your mileage may vary) that the central fallacy that has been promulgated has to do with the notions that everything is a document and that bandwidth is infinite (Google certainly seems to believe the latter). HTML5 is demonstrably larger than HTML 4 and XHTML 1, not to mention the additional size of the CSS files and the Javascript necessary to cope with the broken implementations of the various browsers. With Internet providers starting to clamp down with bandwidth caps, I'm somewhat surprised that the "web standards" bodies just keep sailing blithely along like the bridge isn't out.
Mobile networks exacerbate the problems because the carriers can't just build out more spectrum to meet demand. Paul Jacobs, the CEO of Qualcomm, made the comment at the last Uplinq that developers need to start focusing on the efficiency of their applications with regards to the data being sent over wireless networks. Nothing will help streaming multimedia except more efficient codecs, but for everything else size matters. However, I don't get the impression that anyone is really feeling the pinch yet. But they will...
Remote Desktop Access HTML5 based
I'm sure that HTML5 will bring us new standards.
Here you have a link to check a new pure-web solution that uses HTML5 to replace the old VNC:
http://www.supportsmith.com/ThinVNC/HTML5-VNC.aspx
:)
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
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mwilson1962
35 Comments
Web programming
It is unbelievable how crappy the underlying architecture of the web is. HTML and XML are terrible ways to exchange data - verbose and hard to parse, very inefficient. This has resulted in 100's or 1000's of technologies and API's to overcome the deficiencies in technology that was laid down over 20 years ago. I guess that's the way it goes - some people come up with something that gets the job done, and it becomes a standard, no matter its merits (kind of like MS-DOS!).
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kdubb
16 Comments
Re: Web programming
I disagree with this completely. Tags are probably the easiest things to parse, most people use XML not for its compactness but for it's eXtensibility, and HTML has undergone gargantuan game changers within the past 10-15 years.
The internet is about leveling the ground between competing technologies. If you offer a better service for a better price then you will gain marketshare. The days of products like Microsoft Office being your only option are all but gone.
The internet is challenging software makers of all products to an open competition.
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