W3C unveils major update - HTML 5

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has revealed the first major update to HTML for 10 years - HTML 5.

The update was developed by a W3C working group, which includes Google, IBM, Microsoft, Mozilla and Nokia.

The revision takes into account the current trend for rich-media applications and online collaboration.

The previous version, HTML 4, was published in 1997, when web sites were a collection of static pages.

HTML 5 is designed to reflect the many changes that have taken place since then, fulfilling a demand for a standard that allows developers to create applications which work across different platforms.

It includes APIs for drawing two-dimensional graphics, embedding and controlling multimedia, managing client-side data storage and editing parts of documents. It will also make it easier to represent familiar page elements.

WC3 hopes that HTML 5 will help to provide consistency in the way sites are built. This should improve interoperability and reduce software costs by providing precise rules about how to handle all correct HTML documents and also how to recover errors.

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