5 Fantastic Features of HTML 5
Even though HTML 5 is a few years away from being used widely, there is still many powerful tags which are supported in most browsers, and google showcased some of these at Google’s I/O 2009 Keynotes.
The 5 main elements they showcased where:
Canvas
The canvas element allows users to draw on a web page using Javascript, check out this demo from google. It also allows for simple games to be played, check this first person gifter demo from google. But the major power of canvas tool is revealed when you take a look at Mozilla’s BeSpin, which is a browser based code editor written in just HTML and JavaScript.
Video
The video element allows video to be embedded into webpage without the use of flash, just like the img tag is used now. Check this example of a video on youtube running through the video tag, you wont notice much different until you look in the source and see the video tag.
GEOLocation
The GEOLocation API allows web apps to pull the user location and use it in the application, an example of this is the Where Am I button on google maps.
AppCache & Databases
AppCache & Databases allows web app’s to function offline, an example of this is stickies which work when your disconnected from the web.
Workers
Workers is a great mechanism which allows JavaScript to be processed without slowing down the browser, to test this first run this example and try changing tabs in your browser and then try running this example and changing tabs. You will see that the first slows your browser basically to a halt and the second doesn’t.
A more impressive example of this is the video motion tracker, which just uses JavaScript in the browser.
All of the example came from Google’s I/O 2009 Keynote, and are only tested in certain browser noted on this showcase page from Google.
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