Besides being the go to buzz word for web development these days, HTML5 is the next generation of standards(5g?) for building websites and browsers. Without going into mind-numbing esoteric details, I can tell you that you can turn your web page into HTML5 with (almost) a single line change of your source code.
<!DOCTYPE html>
Of course, besides bragging rights to your non-technical minded friends, this change will have no effect on your page. What it will do is give you the power to use the newly standardized HTML5 tags such as <video> and <canvas>. These tags allow your browser to natively support what once took a third-party propriety plug-in, Flash.
Dont get me wrong, the w3c didn’t introduce a new standard to kill Flash. It just so happens that a certain companies disdain for Flash coincedes with the introduction of a new web standard that is capable of replacing it. Maybe, given time.
With all the hype for HTML5 one could be lead to believe that the <video> tag is the greatest thing to hit the Internet since, well, embedded video.
That is not the case. Right now the video tag is used mostly as a degredation tool. If you want to host a video clip on your site, you would be remiss if you only hosted it in HTML5. This is because the w3c standard does not specify a media encoding for your video. As such browser vendors are free to support any or all of the video formats including H.264, Ogg Theora or VP8(WebM) and they don’t all support the same ones. This means your fancy HTML5 video will likely only be served to tablet and non-Flash users in H.264. Most visitors will still see the good old-fashioned Flash version they already support.
Now on to the <canvas> tag. Again, this tag is meant to be an open standard to an already existing function of a browser plug-in. The <canvas> tag lets you define drawable region and interact with it using JavaScript. One use is to make games for your browser, a realm long dominated by none other than Flash.
The HTML5 standard includes lots of other things besides the “Flash killers” that seem to garner so much attention. For some reason we never hear about the other features like drag and drop and geolocation.
So, do you need HTML5? Probably not, unless you want to make your website more ipad/iphone friendly or you really like being on the cutting edge of web technology.
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