How HTML5 Will Change the Web

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Peter Wayner looks beyond the codec and plug-in wars to examine nine areas where HTML5 will have a significant impact on Web development. From enabling more interactive graphics, to tapping local file storage, to geolocation, HTML5 is rife with rich capabilities — and may even improve our ability to secure applications delivered via the Web, Wayner writes. But the most important impact of HTML5 will be its ability to simplify Web development itself: 'HTML5 offers one language (JavaScript), one data model (XML and DOM), and one set of layout rules (CSS) to bind text, audio, video, and graphics. The challenge of making something beautiful is still immense, but it's simpler to work with a unified standard.'"

Comments

"Offers one way of doing things"

[betterunixthanunix]

HTML5 may offer a unified way to do things...but that does not mean that the other ways will just vanish. It will be a long time before HTML5 completely displaces Flash or Java applets, assuming that such a thing even happens. Frankly, I doubt that the popular browsers will even have a reliable implementation of the standard until at least 2013, so HTML5 won't really offer developers anything unified for a while.

Re:"Offers one way of doing things"

[betterunixthanunix]

As you point out, developers will use a library that resolves the incompatibilities for them. More precisely, they will seek software the levels the field between browsers -- software that already exists, in the form of applets (Flash and Java) and HTML4/JS/etc. libraries. My point was that the current way to deploy applications on the web is not going to disappear just because HTML5 comes out, and that incompatibility between browsers will only ensure that the current methods stick around even longer.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:I love flashblock

[betterunixthanunix]

You most certainly can block it -- it resides nicely between two tags. The bigger question is, will asshole web developers use canvases in places where straight up text would have worked just fine, and force us to deal with their CPU eating abominations for no good reason at all?

Re:HTML5 Will Help Change The Web

[Yvanhoe]

Semantic web will take off when AI agents will be elaborate enough to fill in all the metadata thet humans don't care about (because they are still better than computer at rebuilding the context of an information). Right now user-entered information has this form : "#GoReds : Arrived at the stadium at 10AM woohoo!" and semantic web expects them to do something like

"<user id=1983744 nick="#GoReds"/> : Arrived at the<location><reference>ElisParkStadiumSouthAfrica</reference><tag>stadium</tag></location> at <datetime><timezone>SouthAfrica</timezone><time>10:00:00</time></datetime> woohoo"

The core assumption that users cared about filling correct metadata was wrong outside the research community (and even outside the IT research community). It will take off but you need software to fill in what was assumed users would do.

Security?

[cgenman]

HTML5 will improve security

While I love many things about HTML5, the idea of throwing out rendering libraries and starting again from scratch does not necessarily fill one with confidence about the security of the tools. Sure, less reliance on plug-ins means less opportunities for 3rd party security holes. But doing everything in the browser code itself also means that the potential attack vectors have more direct control over the machine. Plus any new library is going to have security vulnerabilities for a while.

I'm not saying HTML5 is insecure. But let's not kid ourselves: there will be a year or two of scrambling to fix new attack vectors.

What could possibly go wrong?

[vtcodger]

***HTML5 will allow applications to tap local file storage***

Once or twice a decade I encounter a "They can't possibly be serious" moment. This is one of those occasions.

Re:The one real data model: XML

[CRCulver]

In the past, whenever someone has recommended XHTML on Slashdot, there are generally been cries of "It's too much work to make it validate!" Now, that might be true for Joe Average who just wants to put up a simple personal website (but he's more likely to use a CMS anyway), but if you're an experienced developer, than I for the life of me can't understand how writing valid XHTML can be considered too hard.

Closing tags, for example, should come naturally. Do you leave parentheses out when you're writing in a scripting language? Emacs at least at NXML-mode which shows you immediately if you've made a mistake that will not let the document validate.

And anyone who has had to extract data from a webpage ought to adore valid, semantically-meaningful XHTML, because it makes the process effortless whereas HTML requires specialized, not always accurate libs and a lot of work.