Moving to HTML5

Before we run through some HTML5 features let us be sure of what HTML5 is. There is alot of hype around the term and it is often (even by esteemed bodies like w3c) used as a catch-all phrase to cover a new generation of web technologies, more specifically CSS3, AJAX and then HTML5 itself. In these next few pages I will show off some of the specific HTML5 features.

If you have already looked at my HTML 20/20 programme you may be surprised to learn you are already running HTML5. Everything you’ve learnt there is still absolutely valid but HTML5 gives you more toys to play with.

Browser support

To see these new HTML5 features you will need a ‘modern’ browser – any recent copy of Firefox, Safari, Opera or Google Chrome will do the trick. If you are an IE user then you will need IE9. Those older versions of IE, 6, 7, 8 don’t support HTML5.

This does leave about half of web users out in the cold, but as you will see, creating HTML5 pages will not harm these users. You can start using HTML5 now. You don’t have to wait until all your users have a HTML5 supporting browser as we will see there are workarounds.

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