WEBVTT - What is HTML 5?
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
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tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
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and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Palette
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and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
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works dot com. Sitting across from me again as usual,
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is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. And to all our new listeners,
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hello for the first time, for the last time, yes, okay,
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never again. Let's start off with a little listener mail
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list listener mail poems from Brandon from Iowa City, and
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Brandon says, I just listened to your show about online
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productivity and it made me think of another topic. If
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you haven't done it already, a show about HTML five
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would be pretty interesting. I have only heard a little
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bit about it, but it sounds as if it would
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add some new functionality between the Internet and the user.
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I really enjoyed the show, but have two suggestions, so
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listen up, Chris. Number one, it is most enjoyable when
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you stay focused on the topic for fifteen to twenty
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I'm assuming he means minutes, but I guess we can
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interpret that. However, we like and number two, if I
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fall into the camp of preferring the calm version of
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the listener mail, keep up the good work, Brandon, Brandon,
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Sorry about that, Brandon. Well, Brandon, um, don't worry. I'm
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doing the calm version of listener mail because as much
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as I know the people who who love the old
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version love it, uh, they don't yell at me like
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everyone else does. So and of course, I mean I
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can't really blame them. I I yelled first. So HTML five, yes,
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you know, there almost wasn't an HTML five. In fact,
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I didn't know that. Let's let's do a little trip
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down memory lane with HTML. We're gonna the actual the
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time machines in the shop, so we're not gonna be
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able to take a trip that today. Turns out somebody
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used it to go and mess up the Magna Carta
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sign in twelve fifteen. That was me. Um So anyway,
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so what HTML. Let's let's from the very beginning we
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go back to CERN. Yes, yes, CERN. You know CERN's
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the same r M. Yes, same organization that oversees the
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large Hadron Collider. So when they're not trying to destroy
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the universe, CERN is trying to do I I am
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the first to tell you that the Large Hadron Collider
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is not going to destroy the universe. That was that
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was just a joke. But Tim burners Lee works at CERN,
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and Tim burners Lee is the guy who you may
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know as the father of the World Wide Web. Yes,
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and so a lot of the early development for the
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markup language, the Hypertext Markup Language or h t m L,
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was done at CERN. So for the first couple of
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years really, that's actually for the first i'd say five years,
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that's that's where most of the development came from. UM.
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And I'm sorry to go ahead, I'm sorry to interrupt,
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but I was I was going to point out that
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that HTML, UM, there there's actually a markup language that
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predates HTML called s g mL, which is a standard
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generalized markup language. And UM, basically s g mL is
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this really um extensible complex system that allows you to
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define what a markup language actually is. UM. Actually got
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that paraphrase from the W three C But UM, but yeah,
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I mean, it's it's serious, it's it's got the ability
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to describe all kinds of elements and things. UM. And
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I think, if I'm not mistaken that Mr burners Lee
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wanted to create sort of a simplified version of s
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GML that had certain predefined elements, because for any version
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of STML, you actually have to explain how the markup works.
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And HTML is a solidified, preset group of of elements, right,
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And it's it's a set of of different tags and
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and ways to describe how something needs needs to look
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that is recognizable universally. Yes, uh, that that was the
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whole point of it. It's a set of standards so
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that everyone can use the same sort of tags to
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get the same sort of effect. You don't have to
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reinvent the wheel every time you want to display something
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on the web. And that's really what markup language is
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all about. It's it's not necessarily the content that you're
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seeing on the web, but how that content is presented
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to you, whether it's in a certain font, a certain color,
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what kinds of images might be there, how the images
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are aligned on the page. All of this ultimately goes
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back to HTML and to an extent, XML extensible markup language. Well,
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XML is also a derivative of s GML as well. Yeah, um,
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and it is more uh more extensible, but it's it's
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more customizable you can do a lot more with it. UM.
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In the case of s GML and x m L UH,
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what you have to do is you have to, as
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I said before, define what these these tags are. UM.
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They rely on a document type definition or d T
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d UH to some degree to explain UM. You know,
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if you want to create your own tag, that's fine,
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but you have to explain what to the computer what
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that tag is supposed to do. Whats right exactly? HTML
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is is basically a set document type definition to where
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there is a certain subset of elements and and tags
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UM that are you know, pre set in the document
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type that everyone can use. So it's not really customizable
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by the end user as much as XML with for example,
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in HTML, B is going to mean bold and slash
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B means in bold and that's that's predefined, uh. Definition
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as opposed to XML, where you could create a tag
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that before you you define it really doesn't mean anything
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at all. It's only after you define it that the
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computer can interpret it and then display whatever it is
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you want, however it is you wanted. UM. Alright, So
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getting back to h T M L, so the first
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few years it's it's over at certain and then the
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the I E T T F then moves to W
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three C once that gets formed, and we get up
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to Worldwide Wide Consortium, Yes, and it's a it's an
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organization UM that works to standardize these sort of things.
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We get up to HTML three point oh uh, and
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then three point two which comes out, and then you
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get H T M L four, which is really pretty
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much what we're using now, and H was supposed to
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have stopped. Yeah, the W three C decided at that
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point that we had pretty much gone as far as
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we needed to go with HTML, and that we could
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if we wanted to go further, or we needed to
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concentrate on other markeup languages, including x M L Y.
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XML was supposed to be the new thing UM. Of
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course it wasn't actually knew at that point, but they
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wanted to transition everybody over to that, and then development
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started on x H T M L UM and everybody
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thought that that was going to be it. But as
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it turns out, UM, some some pretty heavy hitters got
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into UM. The got the idea into their heads that
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they wanted to try to bring back HTML in a
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brand new way when they didn't like X date x
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H t m L as much part of the problem
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was that UM, as as a said in the W
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three C website, uh, XMLS deployment as a web technology
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I'm quoting here was limited to entirely new technologies like
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RSS and later ADAM, rather than as a replacement for
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existing deployed technologies like H T m L, which meant
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that you're just getting you're bulking up. You're having to
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add more and more markup languages to achieve what you want,
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as opposed to revolutionizing the the basic standards so it
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includes everything, and it's more elegant, so it's getting more
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and more chaotic. Uh. And as you said, the heavy
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hitters decided they wanted to go and look at develop
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further developing the HTML standard rather than adding new standards.
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Those heavy hitters included Apple and Mozilla and Opera and
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UM that would be the what w G, the Hypertext
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Application Technology Working Group. Yeah, because boy, if there's one
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thing engineers are good at, it's coming up with acronyms.
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So uh, I'm just kidding. I know we probably have
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some engineers out there, you guys are awesome. Then we're
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going to get into the whole acronym versus yes, I know,
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well what WIG I pronounced it, so it's an accord acronym. Yes,
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it has been acronymified. Now. Originally the w REC had
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nothing to do with HTML five. They were pretty much saying, no,
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we are done. We're not going to do any more
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work on this. You guys go in and do your
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own thing, but we're not wasting time on that. But
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as time went on, the W three C kind of
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the organization reconsidered its position on the whole HTML five question,
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and it was about in two thousand and six they
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said that maybe they did want to kind of participate
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in the development of the standard, and in two thousand
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seven they formed a group that works with what wig
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to develop HTML five. So what is HTML five all about? Well,
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there are a lot of a lot of things on
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the web that you cannot view in a browser without
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first downloading some sort of plug in, right, So, lots
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of video formats, lots of things like that. Um where
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if you were to get a browser, a brand new browser,
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especially in older version that doesn't have these things pre
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built into them, um, you would go to a page
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and it would tell you you couldn't view that stuff
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until you first installed a plug in, and so you
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may have seen this with things like shock Wave, flash players,
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all this sort of stuff. Real player, Yeah, there's there's
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dozens and dozens of them, to the point where that's
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actually a security concern because, uh, you know, you might
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encounter a page that tells you there's something on there
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that you can't view because you don't have the latest
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plug in of whatever. But in reality, the plug in
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is not a plug in, it's malware, and so you
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download it and then your computer is corrupted, and and uh,
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you end up looking at the screen and cursing a lot.
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And this happens fairly well frequently, I won't say often,
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but frequently enough where it is a legitimate concern. Now,
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HTML five would take a lot of that worry out
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because it would build into it support for a lot
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of the functions that we see on the web. Now
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wouldn't necessarily give you support to access those tools as
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they exist, it would kind of recreate the same experience.
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So I'm not saying HTML five supports flash. I'm saying
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that HTML five will have definitions in it for web
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video and web animation so that you wouldn't have to
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use Flash, which would be great for people who use
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things like mobile phones, smartphones that don't have flash support.
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You wouldn't have to build flash support into these devices,
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they would just have to be compatible with HTML five. Well, UM,
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and you really kind of hit on why I've seen
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the probably the biggest reason that I've seen so many
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people excited about HTML five UM. And it's kind of
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funny to me because you know, I've been using HTML
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um for coding since htmail two, so you know, I'm
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to see the standard change. It really sort of passed
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is without or you know, at least in my experience,
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is past sort of without comments like oh well we've
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got some some new tags. We can go ahead and
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we can add this functionality. UM. But hmail five people
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people are actually talking about it. People are actually sort
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of excited about it. And I think it's the two
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tags that I've seen most people excited about, the video
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and the audio tag UM. And this is basically going
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to allow people to embed multimedia files in the page
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without having to rely on the plug ins, as Jonathan mentioned,
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and and it could. The weird thing about this is
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at least weird to me, is that it's it's sort
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of flexible. You don't necessarily have to have a certain
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type of video, like it's only going to support this
0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:45.480
one there. They're still working on that, and we should
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actually we should have pointed that out probably a while back.
0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:51.120
This isn't a a fully formed specification yet. They're still
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tweaking it and probably will be for a bit. Um.
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But yeah, they're working on ways to actually uh embed
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the the multimedia element of a web page directly into
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the HTML. And there are a lot of things that
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you'll be able to do with it, um that you
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couldn't do with htmail because frankly, HTML was not meant
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to do what we do with it on the web anyway,
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which is why we have plugins and things like flash. Yeah,
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because in order to have the the really rich user
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experiences that we expect on the web, web developers have
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pretty much had to force that into the web because
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the markup language of the web was not designed to
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present that kind of experience to the user. Um. But
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you know, through some ingenuity we've when when I say we,
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obviously I don't mean myself. I've never actually developed any
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of these tools, but engineers developed tools that would allow
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you to see things on the web that otherwise you'd
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never get a chance to to get a look at.
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And uh, as we've mentioned before, even even if you
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are careful and you don't accidentally download malware because you
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tried to download a plug in that it wasn't really
0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:07.640
a plug in, plug ins still cause a and they
0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:11.360
can still be a security risk. They can still create
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vulnerabilities in a browser security. So uh, getting rid of
0:14:17.120 --> 0:14:20.840
plugins is kind of a good thing from a security
0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.119
point of view. UM, I'm not sure that the companies
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that designed these plug ins would necessarily agree. I wonder
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how companies like Adobe and Microsoft view HTML five, how
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many of them will support that that particular standard, because
0:14:38.640 --> 0:14:42.000
you've got products like Flash, You've got products like silver Light.
0:14:42.640 --> 0:14:47.960
UM these are are in a way competing with HTML
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five or what HTML five will ultimately be, so uh
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and you know, real networks, all that kind of stuff.
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You've got all these different uh UM standards or plugins
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out there that HTML five, if if, if people actually
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adopted on a widespread scale, will effectively replace. Well. UM.
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Two of the formats that I've seen people talk about
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