HTML 5 is the new version after HTML4.01. HTML4.01 was released in 1999 and
since then the Web has been changed to a very large extent.
To embrace the changes of the new web, HTML 5 came as a new standard. HTML5 is a joint
venture of W3C and WHATWG to standardize the web and that would be supported by
all the browsers.
Design principals of HTML5
You can read the HTML 5
Design Principles here. I have made a gist out of that document and summarized a few of the important points below,
- Support for existing content. For example a document written in a previous version of HTML should be rendered exactly the same and can be processed as HTML5 document.
- Unbroken Error handling. For example the way existing HTML is handling broken tags, HTML 5 should handle the errors in the same way.
- Design features to be accessible to users with disabilities. For example blind user cannot see Image. So with the img tag there should be provision of alternate text.
- Any feature should be independent of the devices and media.
- If there is already popular technology being used for a particular purpose uses that rather creating new one for the same purpose.
- If there is already a particular practice is popular uses that rather than obsoleting that and forcing to adhere to new practice. For example <br/> tag.
- Support classical and existing HTML syntax
- Ensure that any new feature will adhere to web security standard.
- Feature should provide simple solutions over complex solutions
- Error handling should be there for interoperable implementation
- There should be more markups and markup should be replacing scripts as much as possible.
- For media usage of external plugins should be minimal.
Newly introduced tags in HTML 5
- Article
- Aside
- Audio
- Canvas
- Command
- Datalist
- Details
- Embed
- Figcaption
- Figure
- Footer
- Header
- Hgroup
- Keygen
- Mark
- Meter
- Nav
- Output
- Progress
- Rp
- Rt
- Ruby
- Section
- Source
- Summary
- Time
- Video
- Wbr