HTML5: Meet 10 Sites That Demonstrate What the New HTML Can Do""

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What is A Website

Imagine that a space alien lands and asks the average Earthling this question. How would the Earthling respond? Perhaps the nutshell answer would be something like this:

"A website is a place online where Earthlings go to get information, be entertained, shop, find phone numbers, get recipes, read the news and so on."

"What does a website look like?" the space alien might ask.

"Well," says the Earthling, "a website looks a little like a page out of a book. There's usually text and pictures, but instead of turning the page, you use scrollbars that scroll down in order to read more, or sometimes you can use buttons that say 'next.' Some websites also have videos on them. You press a button and the video plays."

If the Earthling answered the space alien's questions in this manner in 2012 or 2013, the Earthling would be giving essentially accurate information. However, the advent of HTML5 means that everything we're used to seeing and doing online might soon change. Even our basic paradigm of how a website should look and what we do on a website will soon seem as naively innocent of the power of technology as a website from 1995 seems to us today.

Some websites are likely look roughly the same in 2014, '15, '20 and '25 as they do today. News sites, for example, will probably still contain text articles that people scroll through to read. However, as web designers and developers begin to explore the power of HTML5, how we view, read, play with and interact with many websites will change completely. Smash the old paradigm of what a website is and does; HTML5 is about to redefine it all.

Animation, Video and Other Capabilities of HTML5

There are good reasons to say that Steve Jobs changed personal computing as we know it. Besides the most obvious changes he unleashed through Apple championing the first smartphone and the first viable tablet, he also dramatically changed the Web by refusing to let iPhones and iPads have Flash plugins. At first, his decision might have seemed to be madness; by the time the iPhone came out, Flash was nearly ubiquitous. Everyone was using it. Jobs, though, might have told Apple execs who argued with him over Flash something like, "If all your friends were jumping off a bridge, does that mean you would you do it, too?"

Jobs had a lot of choice words for Flash. He called it buggy, the culprit of most Mac crashes, filled with security holes and just plain lazy programming. However, at the time that he went on his Flash rants, 75 percent of online video still relied upon Flash. Abandoning it seemed crazy. It seemed like suicide. Abandon it he did, however. Although he wasn't the only proponent of developing HTML5 as a replacement for Flash, he was probably the most important and loudest voice in the discussion. In 2011, most major browsers updated to support HTML5; in 2012, Adobe announced it would abandon development of a Flash plugin for mobile.

HTML5 integrates JavaScript, HTML and CSS for much smoother, faster animation and video. Instead of requiring a plugin, videos and animations can be embedded naturally within the website. That means that with HTML5, embedding video is becoming as easy as embedding a photograph.

HTML5 integrates JavaScript, HTML and CSS for much smoother, faster animation and video. Instead of requiring a plugin, videos and animations can be embedded naturally within the website. That means that with HTML5, embedding video is becoming as easy as embedding a photograph.

Furthermore, HTML5 doesn't rely upon cookies in the same way that most websites currently do. The "LocalStorage" and "SessionStorage" programming objects that store data strings are both faster and more secure than cookies. "SessionStorage," in particular, only lasts as long as the user session lasts; opening a new tab or a new window starts a new session. Additionally, and without getting too technical, HTML5 also makes working with databases.

When it comes to data storage, though, one of the features of HTML5 that developers are most excited about is the way it interacts with APIs. With HTML5, an entire application can be cached offline.

Is Flash Completely Dead?

Although Steve Jobs is probably smiling down upon us all thanks to the progress HTML5 has made, it wouldn't be accurate to say that Flash is dead quite yet. Even after Germany was finally defeated on the beaches of Normandy and it became clear that it was just a matter of time before the Third Reich fell, nevertheless the war still dragged on for more than a year.

In the same way, Flash has seen its Normandy invasion. Nevertheless, it hangs on. Remember, Flash nearly completely dominated Web video and animation for many years; it will take a while for HTML5 to make enough gains to say that Flash is dead forever. In fact, even though Adobe has been shifting its emphasis to the development of HTML5 tools, at the same time, the company has also been rolling out next-generation Flash tools to try to hang on to at least some of the market.

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