HTML 5 has been introduced for quite some time now! So why is it that all browsers don’t support it yet? This is the future of the web, and since languages are always improving and introducing new tags and commands, I think browsers should stay on top of it too! I found this awesome article that actually broke down which browsers support which attributes of HTML 5. But before I get into that, let’s explore HTML 5 a little and see what it brings to the table!HTML 5 adds a whole new structure to your page! In HTML 4, it was common to add headers, footers, nav-bars, etc as div tags and give them a specific class or ID. In HTML 5, these elements actually have their own tag! For example, <div id=”header”> is now written as <header></header, and <div id=”nav”> is now <nav></nav>. So you can see the structure HTML 5 offers!
The next benefit is the way it handles video and audio elements. Video is becoming increasingly popular on the web, and HTML 4 just didn’t do a good job of offering a decent platform for handling video! You’d have to use some sort of flash element to add video to your page. That’s no longer necessary with HTML 5. Not all file formats are accepted yet, but most browsers are working on it! So now, video and audio elements can be written as <video src=”FILE PATH”><a href=”FILE PATH”>link</a></video> and <audio src=”FILE PATH” ><a href=”FILE PATH”>link</a></audio>
These are the main elements of HTML 5 that I find very exciting! It’s not just limited to this, but maybe that’s something that you should research on your own time, because research makes you learn better. You can read more about it here. So enough of the babbling, here’s the list of compatible browsers with HTML 5:
| Chrome | Firefox | Internet Explorer | Opera | Safari | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| contentEditable | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Stylable Elements (new) | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| getElementsByClassName | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Cross-Document Messaging | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Web Forms 2.0 | Partial | No | No | Yes | Partial |
| Drag and Drop | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
| <audio> | No | 3.5 | No | No | Yes |
| <video> | 3.0 | 3.5 | No | Labs release, partial | Yes |
| <canvas> | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
| Server-sent DOM Events | No | No | No | Partial | No |
| Client-side Storage (name/value) | 2.x | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
