Advantages of HTML5

For those of you who do not know it yet, HTML5 is here and it is ready to use.

This standard gives developers and website designers more flexibility while also enabling websites to be more interactive, powerful and efficient. The best thing about HTML5 is that it is simpler than previous HTML standards, this giving rise to a cleaner code.

HTML5 allows you to play videos, animations, drawings, and music on the page itself. You do not have to use any add-ons such as Flash and Silverlight, the way that most video sites are doing now. Also, developers can now use Javascript alone to create diagrams, graphics and animations on any page they create. HTML5 supports Geolocation, making location directly available on any compatible browser application. HTML5 also brings with it an SQL-based database that allows those in the client side to store data on their computers.

With the offline application cache, users can also still use and access their applications even when they are not connected to their networks. HTML5

allows for better form fields such as better text inputs and better search boxes.

It also handles data validation quite well. On top of that, you can create really nice looking forms. HTML5 is going to make it easier for designers to bring their web pages to iphones and mobile phones. With most mobile phones having no access to Flash, HTML5 can still deliver videos and other multimedia content to these devices.

Differences from Native Applications and Mobile Web Applications

Hybrid mobile applications contain a mixture of native application and mobile web application concepts. They will do contain native code but are not completely native. Typically the native code is provided by a framework and reveals a JavaScript API so that the applications JavaScript code can perform native functions such as taking a picture with the camera. Extra functionality can also be implemented by creating native “plugin” components for the framework that perform a native task.

Unlike mobile web applications, which store source files on a server, hybrid mobile applications store HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files locally so no Internet access is required to launch a hybrid mobile application. To the user a hybrid mobile application appears to be no different than a native application;

it is launched and closed in the same manner as opposed to a mobile web language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can also be applied to any kind of XML document, including plain XML, SVG and XUL.

CSS is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content from document presentation, including elements such as the layout colors, and fonts.

This separation can also improve content accessibility, provides more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics, enable multiple pages to share formatting, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content. CSS can also allows the same markup page to be presented in different styles for different rendering methods, such as on-screen, in print, by voice and on Braille-based, tactile devices. It can also be used to allow the web page to display differently depending on the screen size or device on which it is being viewed. While the author of a document typically links that document to a CSS style sheet, readers can use a different style sheet, perhaps one on their own computer, to override the one the author has specified.

Unlike CSS2, which is a large single specification defining various features, CSS3 is divided into several separate documents called "modules". Each module adds new capabilities or extends features defined in CSS2, over preserving backward compatibility. Work on CSS level 3 started around the time of publication of the original CSS2 recommendation. The earliest CSS3 drafts were published in June 1999.

Due to the modularization, different modules have different stability and statuses. As of June 2012, there are over fifty CSS modules published from the CSS Working Group, and four of these have been published as formal recommendations. CSS3 also supports adding round edges to elements via the border-radius property. Increasingly more websites are utilizing this technique for aesthetic purposes.

The members of the CSS&FP Working Group have decided to modularize the CSS specification. This modularization will help to clarify the relationships between the different parts of the specification, and reduce the size of the complete document. It will also allow us to build specific tests on a per module basis and will help implementers in deciding which portions of CSS to support. Furthermore, the modular nature of the specification will make it

possible for individual modules to be updated as needed, thus allowing for a more flexible and timely evolution of the specification as a whole.

CSS is used to control the style and layout of multiple Web pages all at once.

With CSS, all formatting can be removed from the HTML document and stored in a separate file. CSS gives total control of the layout, without messing up the document content.

 CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets

 Styles define how to display HTML elements

 Styles were added to HTML 4.0 to solve a problem

 External Style Sheets can save a lot of work

 External Style Sheets are stored in CSS files

2.3 CSS3-Features

CSS3 is completely backwards compatible, It will not have to change existing designs. Browsers will always support CSS2.