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Web developers have previously devised ways to keep browsers and servers in constant communication, but Galbraith describes the techniques as "ingenious hacks" that are complicated to execute and don't scale well. Web Sockets, he says, promises an easy way for developers to create Web pages that change in real time--increasingly important with the proliferation of more sources of real-time data, such as instant status updates from social networking users. Users can expect to see Web applications with real-time feeds running more smoothly and with fewer errors.
HTML5 could also help Web applications work better when devices are disconnected from the Internet or intermittently connected, as is common with smart phones, says Alon Salant, who owns Carbon Five, a San Francisco-based company that specializes in building Web applications. A feature called Web Storage lets Web applications store more data inside the browser, retrieve it more intelligently, and control how browsers save parts of pages for faster reloading.
Galbraith is also excited about several features of the newest version of CSS that are designed to work with HTML5. These features will make Web pages more responsive to user input and allow for higher-quality graphics-- things that Web pages aren't normally good at. HTML5 allows developers to embed windows of animation onto a page, but Galbraith says new CSS functionality would perform better.
Lawson says users will also see improved performance from other features of HTML5. For example, improvements in the way browsers handle forms will reduce the amount of javascript needed and speed up page loading, particularly on mobile devices.
Chris Blizzard, Mozilla's director of evangelism, points to the significance of the HTML5 parser. A browser's parser reads the markup used to build a page and figures out how to display it. Blizzard says this is one of the most significant parts of the specification. It's meant to make browsers more interoperable, particularly in the way they handle badly written code. Instead of letting each browser maker decide how to handle imperfect code, the parser specifies what responses to errors should be. This should give users a more consistent experience, regardless of the browser they're using, he says.
While HTML5 seems to present a long list of big changes, Lawson says, the main purpose is to provide simpler ways to do what developers were already doing, making it less likely that they will make errors. Lawson says, "The greater the simplicity, the greater the robustness and therefore the greater the experience for the end user--that's the take I've got."
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
:)
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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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