HTML5: Foundation for the Open Web

HYDERABAD, INDIA: The Google DevFest 2010 held in Hyderabad on February 27, 2010 tried to emphasise the fact that the world was heading towards client-server computing model, which was popular in the 1980s.

Google also establishes the fact that this is the best, cost-effective and hassle-free model for today’s businesses.

Patrick Chanezon, Developer Advocate of Google, in this first presentation at the one-day conference talked about the developments at the App Engine level, which has server level and is now bringing client side by presenting HTML5.

There are already several open web software languages such as CSS, W3C, Web GL, JavaScript, SVG, etc and now they intent to make HTML5 the foundation for the open web. Google care about open web since nobody owns the open web. In fact Google Web Kit is an open source.

Talking about the Google’s interest in Open web, Patrick says, “Google has a selfish interest behind Open Web. We will keep it open so that Google wouldn’t have to do web page indexing. There is no need for any technology authorisation to put advertisements and being Open Web we can put more applications on the web.”

What is HTML5?

It evolved out of HTML4 and also began outside W3C. It is bundled with Web Forms 2.0, Web Apps 1.0. Interesting HTML5 is folded back into W3C.

“HTML5 comes with goodies such as canvas, video and audio. These enable real-time online access to moving images and live audio. Real time processing of video is possible with canvas, video and JavaScript,” he adds.

Canvas gives access to API in JavaScript and gives fixed level data access. It comes with 2D drawing surface and is fully scriptable.

Video is like image, but is moving. It is native UIs to controls and fully scriptable like play, stop, replay, etc. One can apply CSS language and also SVG filter in real-time.

Audio has the same features that of video, except the life video! It is also fully scriptable.

“I am more fascinated about the local storage option in HTML5. Local database storage is stored in the browser HTML file format. I think this will be an interesting offline application that many developers would be interested in. HTML5 is already here in iPhone, gmail and Gcalendar for mobile," he notes.

New JavaScript

Fast JavaScript VMs (V8, Squirrelfish, etc).

Programming in the large.

Query-like syntaxes when working with the DOM.

State of cross-browser support.

Promising areas that are being developed is Accelometer. This is JavaScript based and is not standardised yet. This new option is mostly for phone (API). This apart Canvas 3D rendering, Collada Parser is new additions that are planned.

All these features put together are making browsers rich for developing web applications.