With Safari 4’s improved history search, Top Sites and controversial tabbed windows features garnering much of the attention, users have largely overlooked support for HTML 5 introduced in the public beta of the next version of Apple’s Web browser. HTML 5 is the latest Hypertext Markup Language—the core language for the Internet. Web developers use this programming language to build the Web sites that we visit every day.
HTML 5 offers support for audio and video tags, giving developers an easier way to bring them into Web sites. Apple promises support for HTML 5 media tags among other next-generation Web standards in Safari 4.
An example of Apple’s implementation of HTML 5 is closer than you think. Apple posted a page on its Web site showing how HTML 5 will change what we can do on the Web and how it will look in Safari.
If you point Safari 4 to Apple’s welcome page, you will see all kinds of things going on. For instance, there’s an animated Safari icon, audio and video, all put together using HTML 5 and all generated dynamically.
Safari isn’t the only Web browser that will support HTML 5. Firefox also announced plans to support the technology in future releases.