HTML4 vs HTML5 — Key Differences Every Developer Should Know

Introduction

HTML5 has a more simplified syntax compared to its predecessor where new element have been added and others were removed.

The following are the newly added elements unless mentioned otherwise:

<canvas> element is used for 2D drawings via scripting, mainly JavaScript. Here is an example of an HTML5 Canvas:

				<!DOCTYPE html> 

				<!--Example: Canvas.html --> 

				<html> 

				<head> 

				<title> Canvas example </title> 

				</head> 

				<body bgcolor="#ffffee" aLink="#0000ff" link="#0000ff" text="#000000" vLink="#0000ff" > 

					<font face="times" size="+2" > 

					< canvas id="canvas1" width="200" height="100" style="border:3px solid #000000;"> </canvas > 

				</body> 

				</html>

Please note that the following HTML tags are deprecated and CSS code is needed:

....bgcolor="#ffffee" aLink="#0000ff" link="#0000ff" text="#000000" vLink="#0000ff" .....font face="times" size="+2"

content-specific elements including <article>, <header>, <footer>, <nav>, <section>
<menu> and <figure>elements
Content-specific elememts are shown here:

Enables local web storage greater than 5MB within the user's browser

There are two objects for storing data on the client's machine:
localStorage: Stores data without any expiration date
sessionStorage: Stores data for one session only once the user closes the browser window

Application Cache: Allows to cache the a web application even without an internet connection. The advantages are:

Offline browsing, cached pages load faster, and reduces server load and allows the browser to download only updated pages from the server
The manifest attribute is used to specify offline browsing and the recommended file extension for manifest files is ".appcache"
example: <html manifest="example.appcache">
MANIFEST file is text file instructing the browser what to and not to cache. It has three sections

CACHE MANIFEST: All files that are listed under this header will be cached once they get downloaded for the first time
NETWORK: All files that are listed under this header will need a connection to the server and will never be cached
FALLBACK: All files that are listed under this header require fallback pages in case a page is not accessible

An example of MANIFEST file is shown below :

						CACHE MANIFEST 

						/Web/theme.css	

						/Web/logo.jpg	

						/Web/main.js 


						NETWORK:

						help.asp

						*

						FALLBACK

						/Web/Guide/Readonly.txt

Thi file instructs the browser to perform the following tasks:

Download three files from the Web folder of the website and will be always available even without internet connection
Never cache the file "help.asp" and the symbol * specifies that all other files need an internet connection
The FALLBACK section indicates that the file "Readonly.txt" will be accessed instead of all files in the Web/Guides folder in case of no internet connection

HTML4 vs HTML5: Part 1

Introduction