As a Developer I am very excited for what HTML5 has to offer.  It is adding a lot of functionality that would normally require Javascript, Flash or Silverlight.  For the most part, HTML5 is actually not bringing anything new that hasn’t already been done with the help of Javascript, Flash or Silverlight.  The benefit of HTML5 is that a lot of features that are expected on almost every site such as, audio, video, form validation and more, are built in.

This is great for everyone because now a device only needs to support HTML5 and not have to worry about Flash and Silverlight.  This is great as an end user because you should be able to view the web in it’s entirety as long as your device supports HTML5.

You might have noticed I didn’t mention JavaScript in that last paragraph.  That is because it is still required for a lot of the really cool HTML5 projects you see out there.  For instance, Paper Golf is an HTML5 game.  However, the only thing that is HTML5 is the canvas element on the page.  The canvas element is a container on the page that code languages such as JavaScript can communicate with and manipulate.  In this case, JavaScript is telling the Canvas what to show and do.   In essence, the canvas element is your computer monitor and the JavaScript is the actual computer tower.

Another great addition to HTML5 is video.  This is wonderful for a couple of reasons.  The first being that the user is no longer required to have Flash or some other plugin installed to view video content.  Secondly the video is now part of the core website instead of a box holding a foreign object like a Flash player.  This makes it extremely easy for other elements on the page to interact with the video. For example, you could have the text next to a video change at certain times throughout the video to relate to what is being shown.  This video is now fairly old, but is still a great demonstration of some cool examples of what can now be easily done.

However, like the Paper Golf game, those effects all require JavaScript.

HTML5 is a huge step in the right direction.  As a developer, I couldn’t be happier. As an end user? Well, you honestly might not even notice that anything has changed.  You will still be getting the same content you have for years.  The only difference is that the content is now being delivered in a new way.