W3C Declares HTML5 Standard Complete

More than four years ago, Steve Jobs declared war on Flash and heralded HTML5 as the way to go. You could be forgiven if you thought the HTML5 standard — the follow-up to 1997’s HTML 4 — has long been set in stone, given that developers, browser vendors and the press have been talking about it for years now. In reality, however, HTML5 was still in flux — until today. The W3C today published its Recommendation of HTML5 — the final version of the standard after years of adding features and making changes to it.

As a user, you won’t notice any changes. Chances are your browser already supports most HTML5 features like the <video> element and vector graphics (unless your employer forces you to use a really old version of Internet Explorer, that is). Other important new features that HTML5 has brought to the web over the last few years are things like the <canvas> element for rendering 2D shapes and bitmap images, support for MathML for displaying mathematical notations in the browser, and APIs for everything from offline caching to drag-and-drop support.