HTML5 Has Been Finalized. You Can Now Create Sites Using HTML5

After nearly eight years of work, the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C) has finalized the HTML5
standard, bringing the basic Web technology
firmly into the era of mobile devices and cloud-
driven rich Internet applications.
"HTML5 brings the next generation of the Web,"
said W3C CEO Jeff Jaffe. "It wasn't so long ago
that the Web was about browsing static
documents. Today's Web is a much richer
platform."

Although Web and mobile developers have been
using parts of the HTML5 specification for several
years, the finished specification -- which the W3C
calls a recommendation -- ensures developers that
the code they develop for the Web will work going
forward.
"We're now at a stable state that everyone can
build to the standard and be certain that it will
be implemented in all browsers," Jaffe said. "If we
didn't have complete interoperability, we
wouldn't have one Web."
In 1989, physicist Tim Berners-Lee created the first
version of the HTML as a way to format and link
together written materials so they could be
accessed over the Internet. In the years since, the
resulting World Wide Web has come to serve
billions of users all manner of content, from
movies and music to full-fledged applications.
The HTML5 final recommendation , over 1,370
pages in length, addresses this complex
environment.
HTML5 provides a way to serve multimedia
content and application functionality without
relying on proprietary plug-ins to the browser. It
also addresses a wide range of other uses for the
Web, such as delivering scalable vector graphics
(SVG) and math annotations (MathML).
Today, HTML5 provides a "write-once, run-
anywhere" cross-platform alternative to writing
applications for multiple mobile platforms, such
as Android and Apple iOS devices, Jaffe said.
About 42 percent of mobile application developers
are using HTML, along with JavaScript and
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to build their apps,
according to a 2014 survey from mobile analysis
firm Vision Mobile.
The W3C hopes the specification will be a
cornerstone for future work in what it calls the
Open Web Platform, an even richer set of
standards for building cross-platform vendor
neutral online applications.
Moving froward, the W3C is developing
specifications for real-time communications,
electronic payments and application
development. It is also creating a set of
safeguards for privacy and security.
Ian Hickson, now employed at Google, served as
the principal architect of the HTML5
specification, and engineers at Microsoft, IBM
and Apple served as co-chairs for the working
group. Over 45,000 emails were exchanged when
drafting the document, from representatives of 60
companies.