What is new in HTML 5
Now most of the browsers have the support for HTML 5. From now, web developer’s needs to think how they can utilize the new elements arrived with HTML 5 in their web applications. In this article I am listing some major elements that every web developer will be interested in.
Canvas
This is one of the most interested features introduced. Canvas element allows you to build 2d graphics rendered to the html page. The contents can be drawn to the canvas using java script, thus provides inbuilt capabilities of animations without the help of any third party component.
If you want to read more about Canvas element, follow the below links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_element
http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/the-canvas-element.html
http://weblogs.asp.net/sreejukg/archive/2010/10/11/introduction-to-canvas-element-in-html-5.aspx
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/the-canvas-element.html
Audio
Prior to HTML 5, if you want to play audio in the browser, you are supposed to use Microsoft Silverlight, Adobe Flash, or other browser plugins. The ability to play the audio by the browser varies depending on the plugins available in the browser. HTML 5 introduces a new element named audio that brings in-built support for the audio by browsers. With audio element, browsers have native support for audio playback.
To include audio in the HTML document, use the following syntax.
<audio src=”audio file path” ></audio>
To read more about audio element, follow the below links
http://dev.w3.org/html5/markup/audio.html
Video
Similar to audio, prior versions of HTML 5 required 3rd party plugins to play the video in browser. HTML 5 introduces the new element video element that brings native support for browsers to playback video files in the browser.
To include video in the document, you can use the following syntax.
<video src=”path to the video file”></video>
The video tag have support for attributes such as auto play, preload, width, height etc. Also the video element can be accessed using script, by using client side script, you can play/pause the video. To read more about video element follow the below urls.
http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/video.html#video
In addition to the above, HTML 5 adds lot of new elements. Some elements with their usage are given below.
Header – Specify heading information for a page.
Nav – defines a section that meant for navigation
Figure – defines a group of media element and their caption
Footer – defines the footer of the page
Section – defines a section in the document.
and lot more….
If you want to see a complete reference of all tags available in HTML 5, visit the below link.
Recommended reading
Note: If you find other links are useful for the users to understand more about HTML 5, please post it in the comments or send it to me as email, so that I can include this in the list.