If web development for you has meant learning all the HTML tags, all the CSS quirks of each web browser and making sure your code is XHTML compliant… then I have great news for you! Now that HTML5 is officially released, there are some really cool things you can do with it that will allow you to reach new heights in web development.
First of all, a feature is available called web workers that makes true web applications possible. It works similarly to multi-threading in software applications. If your web applications use long-running or heavily computing scripts, then they can now do it in the background so their processing doesn’t affect the loading performance of your web pages.
The new video element allows you to include web page videos without relying on proprietary third-party plug-ins or codecs. This new built-in HTML5 video element now makes including videos as easy as including images using the IMG element in HTML4.
The new canvas element is one of my favorites. You can actually draw and render graphics on-the-fly. And, it’s done without needing any proprietary third-party plugins. Just think what you can do with this!
Have you used Google Gears yet? If so, then you know it will allow you to store application data locally on your PC. This is something that previous HTML versions wouldn’t let you do. What’s more, it even allows your users to use your web applications offline as well. Imagine the uses for cloud computing with this feature.
Geolocation, probably the most famous new feature, is also available. You can use this to create localized web applications which work with GPS, IP addresses, WIFI, RFID, GSM/CDMA cell IDs and even Bluetooth MAC addresses. Don’t worry about Big Brother though, it won’t work until the user enables the feature.