I watched an excellent video of Bruce Lawson from Opera (the web browser) speaking about the history and potential uses of HTML5. I’ve already been thinking about HTML5 but so far we’ve steered clear because it’s not yet formally complete. They’ve now announced they expect it to be finalised by 2014 – so what does that mean?

Here’s a few bits that stood out for me from the video:

• more universal video access (jump to around 50 mins into the clip)
• easy inbuilt standard controls for forms – no more hacks for sliders or other form controls
• true semantic web – separation of presentation and content
• there is backwards compatibility to previous html standards so if your site is ‘brochureware’ – words, pics and simple forms – then there may be no need to change for a long time.