HTML 5 ushers in new-look web

[Chaslie +]

Article from The Age, Melbourne, Australia
The Age - Business, World & Breaking News | Melbourne, Australia

For the interest of all:

JOHN ALLSOPP
March 23, 2010

The internet is about to get a whole lot more interesting, writes John Allsopp.

It's rare that an arcane piece of technology, particularly one well and truly still under development, should receive the sort of attention that HTML5 has in recent weeks. But just what is HTML5, and who, if anyone, should actually care?

HTML, or HyperText Markup Language, is one of the fundamental technologies of the web - it's how just about every page you visit with your web browser is coded (or, more technically speaking, "marked up").

The current version of HTML - HTML 4 - has been around since 1999 and was developed at a time when the web was essentially a static medium of pages. At that time, the mobile web was little more than a pipedream. But over the past decade the web has become increasingly dynamic - not simply through the (often annoying) addition of more and more video, audio and other multimedia but through an explosion of web applications; everything from online banking to casual games, office suites and email clients. And in the past year or two, the mobile web has truly arrived.

Continued: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/...0322-qrau.html