What is HTML 5?

So if you’ve been paying attention to chatter on the Internet these days, especially geeky chatter, you may have heard the term HTML 5. Well, what is that HTML stands for? Forget it. But it’s the behind-the-scenes coding language that makes us able to see stuff online. Since the original HTML was invented with the web over 20 years ago, it has gone through many updates, but it’s been more than a decade since the last one.

And in web terms, that’s pretty much forever. I mean, like, ten years ago, we all still loved our digital watches, Calculator. So HTML has been a few steps behind changes on the web for quite some time.

For example, when the video came along, there was no way to integrate it naturally into HTML, so different companies developed their own video players to work around it. These worked okay, but they were all external plugins, meaning that you had to download them and this was, well, annoying and potentially risky.

Html 5 is adding capabilities to deal with this stuff like video right into its code so that plugins hopefully won’t be necessary, and there are plans to add a bunch more cool stuff that previously was tricky or even impossible to implement with HTML alone.

The overall hope is that someday it will create a standard, consistent web experience across all devices and browsers. Html Five is still being developed and as of early 2012 isn’t 100% finalized, but the browsers are starting to implement some of its features, and together they are working hard to get HTML Five fully ready for someday in the future.