Specs and Stuff

HTML is a collection of special elements and attributes that, when combined and organized together, make each and every website that is on the internet. On it's own, HTML makes little to no sense. Sure, there are some elements—like the "<p>" tag, or paragraph tag, for example—that are self-explanatory, but the majority of them just look like a random collection of abbreviations contain between two triangular brackets. What makes HTML work, really, is your internet browser (like Safari, Chrome or Firefox): it's the browser that takes all of those random tag-things and makes them look like a finished website that you can interact with.

Toggle Section Summary

For the most part, all of the different web browsers (and there are a lot of them!) interpret HTML the same way, but sometimes there can be problems. For example: have you ever gone to a website in Safari only to go back to it on Internet Explorer and it looks really—for lack of a better word—wonky? That's because each of the different browsers have different "rules" for reading elements of HTML, which means that these elements are treated in markedly different ways. This means that sometimes links can appear and disappear, images show up differently and the space between page sections can either be way too large or way too small.

Toggle Section Summary

In the end, this inconsistency in HTML parsing (despite the language itself being completely the same no matter where you go) becomes a problem for both users and developers. The different reactions that browsers have to HTML make it harder for developers to create websites that are cross-browser compatible. You're probably wondering, though, how this affects users at all because it really sounds like something that only affect those pesky developer people. The long and the short of it is, if a developer hasn't made a website compatible with the specific type (and version) of web browser you are using the result is a web page that either doesn't work or looks like, well, crap (and no one likes using a crappy-looking web page).

Toggle Section Summary

Okay, Great. But What's So Different About HTML5?

HTML5 changed a lot of things that were standard in HTML4 (the previous version of HTML that all browsers can currently render—subtle differences between the results notwithstanding). The biggest (and most confusing) things that HTML5 changed have to do with the specific elements, attributes and coding conventions that need to be used and followed to make websites. But we're not going to get into that because it all ends up being a bunch of tech-talk that no one outside the W3C (the people that made HTML standard across the internet) understand.

Toggle Section Summary

What's important to know, in a general sense, is this: HTML5 has a lot of new features that make creating and maintaining websites quicker and a heck of a lot easier. This is also why we're going to focus on how HTML5 makes putting multimedia— that would be stuff like videos, audio, plug-ins and dynamically-generated graphics— into websites simpler.

Toggle Section Summary

Awesome! Can I Use It Now?

The answer to that is yes and no. HTML5 is still in the process of having all of its bugs and kinks worked out. Don't fret, though! Some aspects of HTML5 can be used right away—depending on which browser and which version of that browser you're currently using.

Toggle Section Summary