HTML5 Series: What makes HTML5 different?

I decided during a holiday last week to read “Pro HTML5 Programming – Powerful APIs for Richer Internet Application Development”. It was my first real dive into HTML5 and I have to say I am very impressed. Sure, I had heard about all the goodness in HTML5 before reading this book but I had never, until now, actually experimented first hand.

We are also developing a HTML5 application at Yoolk but as you can probably tell, I have never touched that code! Instead, I will probably build something myself just for fun or maybe as a project for Startup Weekend in some city!

My overall feeling about HTML5

Forget other platforms (almost). HTML5 is the platform of choice

I am very excited! HTML5 really feels like it is bridging the gap between native client apps build in .NET or GTK to pure web based (or should I say browser based?) applications. My feeling is “finally, pretty much any application that I dream up can be built for and run in a browser!”. Wow! This makes everything so much easier! No pondering should I use .NET, GTK, Flex or any other platform. There are still some exceptions like beefy enterprise applications which still require local install and setup but for 80% (based on the 80/20 principle, of course) HTML5 will do!

Amazon Kindle Fire boots HTML5 adoption via the Silk Browser

Now that Amazon have slammed the tablet market with their new Kindle Fire it opens up the potential for hundreds of thousands and, eventually millions, of new users who developers can target their HTML5 applications towards. The tablet device period opens up a whole new exciting opportunities for HTML5 applications and I can’t wait to get my hands on a Kindle Fire to try this out!

The future direction of HTML5 seems really really bright

Some of the future additions to HTML5 as mentioned in the Pro HTML5 Programming book are really cool. For example doing for audio what the canvas has done for images. Basically meaning that the

HTML5 Series Contents

In this series I will go through many of the parts of the HTML5 API as well as attempting to try out some of the edge technology that is out there but not so wide spread. Over the next month or so, the following contents list will become links to actual pages in this blog!

Getting started with the HTML5 Canvas API Getting started with the HTML5 Audio Video API Getting started with the HTML5 Geolocation API Getting started with the HTML5 Forms API Getting started with the HTML5 Web Storage API Getting started with the HTML5 Communications API Getting started with the HTML5 Web Sockets API Getting started with the HTML5 Offline Applications

I hope that you enjoy the HTML5 series!