Now websites can truly become interactive

HTML stands for Hypertext Mark-up Language and is the syntax used to create the code that specifies the content of a web page. It is the language that made the Internet possible.

When the Internet started becoming very popular in the mid to late 1990s, a standardisation of HTML quickly became established and was designated as HTML4. Shortly after, a new version of HTML came along that was much stricter allowing greater compatibility between browsers and it was called XHTML. At Net Quality Web Design Nottingham we could see the immediate benefits of this and we were amongst the earliest adopters of this language.

However, despite the advances that this offered, the Internet world was very slow in its take-up of this new version of the syntax. Web Designers liked the simplicity offered by the more pragmatic HTML4 and therefore stuck with it for many years after its release.

In the world of fast moving technology this was a surprising set of circumstances. People were hanging on to the old ways.

Gradually however, with the advance in browser capabilities, most web designers did begin to adopt the new standards offered by XHTML, albeit in a half-hearted way as the most popular version was known as "XHTML Transitional". As the name suggests, it was a transitional version of the language that allowed some of the old pragmatism to remain.

Along comes HTML5

Now the World Wide Web Consortium has recognised this need for pragmatism and have offered the world the opportunity to truly bring websites into the 21st century with the new standardised language which is called HTML5. It is less strict than XHTML and allows ever greater flexibility and modernisation of websites allowing them to do much more remarkable things whilst remaining broadly compatible between web browsers.

That's all well and good, but what does it mean for me?

This BBC article that I read today does a nice job in summing up what HTML5 means for the world in general. It mainly means that you can see animated websites and video whether you use your PC, iPad or television to surf the Internet and the experience should be almost identical no matter which device you use. This allows web designers to be much more creative when it comes to the more flamboyant things a website can offer.

Again, Net Quality Web Design Nottingham were early adopters of HTML5. We continue to update our skills and knowledge so that we can bring to you, the best, the latest and the most impressive the world of web design has to offer for the small to medium business in Nottingham today.