HTML5 vs HTML

There is some differences between HTML and HTML5. So though, we have:

HTML5 was designed to replace both HTML 4, XHTML, and the HTML DOM Level 2.

And XHTML is HTML + XML. For a better syntax and for a better administration they had to force HTML to be proper: for instance, if you open this tag <p> you have to close the tag with </p>.

The main goals of HTML5 are:

- Deliver rich content as graphics or movies without the need of additional plugins as Flash, for instance;

- Provide better semantic support for web page structure. For this, HTML5 introduces new structural element tags;

- Provide better cross-platform support (for PC browser, tablet or smartphone);

- Provide a stricter parsing standard to simplify error handling, ensure more consistent cross-browser behavior.

HTML5 has improved the support for embedding graphics, video and audio. For that HTML5 has some new tags: <canvas>, <audio>, <video>

HTML5 has introduced web workers. A web worker is a script that runs in the background, in another thread, without the page has to wait for it to complete. The visitor can continue to interact with the page while the web worker runs in the background.

HTML5 has new semantic tags to complement the structural logic of modern web applications. Here we have:

<main>

<nav>

<article>

<section>

<header>

<footer>

<aside>

HTML5 has new controls like

<calendar>

<date>

<time>

<email>

<url>

<search>

HTML5 has new extensions to the Javascript API as geolocation, drag-and-drop, storage and caching.