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HTML 5 en CSS 3

Soon all major browsers will support HTML 5 and CSS 3.  What will change, and what advantages does this offer to web developers and end clients? The biggest change probably lies in the fact that HTML and CSS will be less dependent on additional languages and plugins, like Flash or Javascript to achieve certain effects or display animations and video material.

Below are some highlights to look forward to.

The video tag

It is possible to directly insert a video into HTML using a video tag, without the need for Flash or Silverlight. The browser uses its own built-in-player for video display.

The canvas element

The canvas element is capable of creating complex animations, just as well as in Java. Even 3D animations are among the possibilities.

Content-specific elements 

There will be a new set of tags in HTML 5, which will make it easier to indentify specific website components. Some examples are: nav, for navigational elements;  progress, for the performance of a task, such as downloading; section/header/footer, to  indicate parts of a website; or article, to reference articles.

With better input-validation 

Input fields get a wide range of new types with better input validation, and validation can all be done directly by the browser. Useful new types include, among others, telephone, e-mail, url, date and search. 

Rounding, shadows, gradients and transitions

Many new CSS 3 elements make it possible to give almost every HTML element a nice rounding, shadow or gradient, without having to use images or numerous additional divs. Besides this, transitions make it possible for fade-in and fade-out effects triggered by mouse-overs, without using javascript or jQuery.

Why start using HTML 5 and CSS 3?

Even if HTML 5 and CSS 3 aren’t yet supported by all browsers, most modern browsers so far do, like Chrome, Safari and Firefox. It has been announced that Internet Explorer 9 will offer support for HTML 5 and CSS 3, although it may not be supported 100%..

This means that there is much advantage by starting to use HTML 5 and CSS 3 and website visitors in modern browsers can already be shown nicer looking and lighter websites, which use CSS 3 effects. Browsers which do not support these effects will not distort your website or display them incorrectly.

Besides that, there are some gains as far as SEO is concerned. Where there is now <div class="article"> ... </div>, you can now use <article></article>. This may have little effect now, but it is very likely that future search engines will attach great importance to this.

There is also no real reason not to work with HTML 5. The language is indeed compatible with HTML 4 and XHTML, so each browser can already handle it now. It will only take a while for the specifications of HTML 5 to be fully implemented and for each browser to support each feature completely.