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The BBC's Ian Hardy looks at why companies have been rushing to embrace HTML5 - and the innovative ways it is being used
It's hard to imagine now,
but original sites on the world wide web, written in HTML code or
hypertext mark-up language, were made up of little more than text.
Corporate web designers were well
aware that most of their customers had slow connections and would not
tolerate much of a wait.
Even a simple black and white image could irritate a user, as
it gradually appeared on the screen revealing itself one painful line
at a time.
That began to change as modem speeds gradually crept up and
content makers used more sophisticated methods to encode their
multimedia content.
Macromedia's Flash, now an Adobe product, made all the
difference when it arrived in the mid-nineties. Animations, video
sequences and graphics became more sophisticated.
But since its invention in the early 1990s HTML has not supported video natively.
That is why HTML5 is being received so enthusiastically by
businesses in particular. The latest version can perform all kinds of
dynamic tasks and visual tricks. The web is progressing faster now than
it has in a long time.
Going native
Application developers, like Kevin Sweeney who works at Vimeo,
a video-sharing website based in New York, have already embraced the
new tools that are built in to HTML5.
It will take time before all systems are able to work with HTML5
"We've needed to rely on third parties like Adobe Flash or
QuickTime and had to embed this inside web pages. What HTML5 will do is
remove them from the equation so this stuff is supported natively," he
says.
Put simply it means that there's now much less chance that
customers visiting a website will come across a black hole in the middle
of the page, or get endless prompts to "download a plug-in" which may
take several minutes to install.
Continue reading the main story
Aaron Gustafson AuthorPeople will know what ingredients they have in their refrigerator and keep track of it using an HTML5 app on the screen”
By then it is often too late. The consumer has already clicked on a competitor's website.
The iPod Touch, iPhone and lately the iPad have been
especially good at leaving black holes on the screen, because the former
boss of Apple, Steve Jobs, would not allow Flash to run on any of his
iOS devices from the start.
The success of these products globally means many companies
cannot ignore the need to re-code their entire websites in HTML5,
especially the multimedia content.
A lot of companies are not waiting for the HTML5 specs to be
finalised and approved in a multi-year process. They have jumped right
in, using early "unofficial" versions of the code to deliver a complete
web page to every customer.
New horizons
Aaron Gustafson, author of the book Adaptive Web Design, says
the versatility and dynamic nature of HTML5 means it can be used in new
ways in different environments including the office and kitchen.
"We are starting to see devices that are not traditionally web devices becoming more web-enabled," he says.
"If you are a recipe curator with a website, all of a sudden
you can build pages that work on a touchpad that's built into a
refrigerator. People will know what ingredients they have in their
refrigerator and keep track of it using an HTML5 app on the screen."
Many of Google's famous front page doodles, like this Jules Verne-inspired interactive submarine, are built using HTML5 Google is pushing HTML5 hard, not surprising since the greater
impact that web pages and apps have, the more advertising it can sell.
Its search homepage is traditionally sparse but many of the
doodles, including the Jules Verne-inspired interactive submarine, are
now being designed to take advantage of the newest code.
Jeff Harris, product manager for Google Docs, says HTML5 will change the way its services operate from the ground up.
"A simple example would be taking an attachment from your
desktop and dragging it into the compose window in Gmail. That's a basic
capability that you couldn't do five years ago because web browsers
didn't support it."
HTML5 also represents another step to the "semantic web", a
web structure championed by Tim Berners-Lee that cross-references,
reacts to and displays multiple information sources from the internet in
real time.
HTML5 is partly responsible for the browser wars in the past few years.
A decade ago Chrome, Firefox and Safari didn't exist, and browser updates for Internet Explorer were only occasional.
Today desktop and mobile browsers update frequently as new HTML5 functions get incorporated.
Companies favour HTML5 because it can also replicate
experiences previously only available inside an app, on the web. This is
especially true for the mobile environment.
And a lot of brand names don't like being part of someone
else's ecosystem because they lose control of pricing and subscribers.
The Financial Times recently announced it will shut off its iPad app
completely following the success of its HTML5 web page.
This is a trend that is likely to snowball within month
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