The rise of HTML5, what are the features of HTML5?

September, 1 2011

HTML5 is coming.

To most web users, it means nothing. At best some will raise an eyebrow with a sigh: "another software with an increased version, so what?"

You'll still have videos, audio, photos, articles, forms, comments, rich designs and all other elements of a website you've gotten used to. So what's the fuss?

Well, HTML5 has been introduced in web browsers for quite some time now since 2009, it's been trickling in slowly. So you probably won't notice it right away. But it has an impact on your website and mostly on whether things will look nice in all browsers without requiring expensive tricks.

HTML5's biggest benefit is in your wallet.

That's right. Let's talk money.

You won't need to commission expensive Flash work... custom animations can be done directly in HTML. Slides, fly outs, transitions, growing, shrinking elements, glowing, drop shadows, gradients, and the list is long.

Neither will you need your designer to produce new headlines with the cool font you insist you must absolutely have... we can embed the fonts direclty in HTML. Actually, at LVSYS, we've been doing this for a long time now, we just make sure very old browsers fallback to a similar looking font.

And how about these very cool animations and all that pizzaz on the website?
- Yep. Same thing, you don't need Flash either.

But how about video?
- It's supported natively, same with audio.

Well, maybe, but how about my graphs, my pie charts and my slideshow presentations?
- Check, check and check, it's all in HTML5.

We just got our website redesigned, will it remain incompatible?
- of cource. HTML is all about introducing new elements, but not breaking compatibility. In other words, you can start injecting HTML5 in your site without worrying about compatibility.

What would have cost you time, labor and special software for producing basic visual effects now costs you the time of an HTML programmer, or a web firm, which is significantly less.

And in our case, we let you edit all of it so you don't even have to call us to get your website to look the way you want.

More control of your website and more SEO control

All this means we can deliver you a highly interactive and visually appealing website with a CMS that allows you to edit all the animations. The CMS (admin panel) is here to provide guidance so that you don't mess up the website inadvertently.

HTML5 provides HTML structure that will simplify search engine's ability to extract content (articles) from the web design. This is huge, it means we can literrally setup your website to tell search engines: "hey, ignore all that design, here is the content you're looking for".

We also call that better content granularity. Not many people use this term, but we do.

Do we need to change your templates? Not really, well, maybe minor adjustments

The CMS is little by little adjusted for supporting more HTML5 features, in rare cases we might have to retrofit your templates. But in all cases, your website will never be broken in an HTML5 only browser. That's our guarantee.

Let us know your thoughts.