It is a high time HTML is given its fullest due. From a hack that supports hyper links, to a meta system that allows information organization, HTML 5 reflects the maturity of developers thinking about writing for the web. The class of changes range from synthetic changes to clean up the language, to cosmetic changes to add more structure to it.
With a stricter content model and the DOCTYPE tag and character encoding, the sense of standardization is enforced on the web writer. It also seems to reflect Opera's commitment to make Audio and Video first class citizens of the web. The newer data controls that are added [date, email, url, month...] would remove the need for non-standard javascript hacks to get certain types of input. As these controls would be native of the OS, syntax checking of the data would be simpler, making the job of Javascript developers easier. Other additions like <dialog> is the drift towards generalization of elements.
Changes in the meaning of <b>, <strong> and <i> backs the philosophy that the presentation is best achieved from CSS, and is best separated from HTML. Also, many redundant attributes for tags (like font, color) have been dropped in favor of using them in styles, backing this philosophy.
With HTML5, the <a> tag is now on a steroid, with a ping attribute that would help identifying dead links. In addition to this, attributes like autocomplete, datalist, autofocus etc. are more an impact of removing chronic annoyances with standard solutions.
Getting into the Javascript space (my favourite !!) a lot of interesting things are happening. The best is the async attribute in the script tag, that will let my page load faster, and not force me to combine *.js files, or place them as near the body> for the sake of performance. The life of JavaScript Programmers is further simplified with attributes like draggable, contextmenu and tabindex. Though I have not really explore cross document messaging, the description seems to head in the direction of making life of mash-ups easier. Things like online/offline events and persistent storage may help out of extensions like Google Gears into a standardized world. The video/audio API will make Youtube better, and apis for network will give Javascript, the power of a full-grown loosely typed language. The HTML DOM is also modified to help cross browser anomalies, typically with functions like getting selections, focus, etc. Doglous Crockford also got his much utilized getElementByClassName() function, something that will help me reduce code size significantly. I reserved the best for the last, and that, I think is the <canvas> element. So here comes a complete drawing engine into JavaScript, and I can now do everything I could do with ActionScript and Laszlo.
However, I am still trying to justify the logic of dropping elements like <frame> and <frameset>.I can technically use <iframe> and place them all over, I am not sure how well will that settle with people who have TOC on the left, and content on the right.
In summary, HTML5 is promising, specially for a JavaScript programmer like me, but again, being at the brink of another browser war, lets see how the browser developers take it. Thought it will take time to flush out old browsers from the market, I am already looking forward to a making the worst programming environment i.e. the browser, easier to deal with.
All for the best....
Check out
http://dev.w3.org/cvsweb/~checkout~/html5/html4-differences/Overview.html
