What are your favorite features of HTML5?

#discuss #anonymous #html

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I'm pretty new to coding, and I want to know how HTML5 is different from past versions of HTML. I feel like getting an understanding of those changes will help me become a better developer, and gain a larger understanding of how to use this specific markup language.

Top comments (8)

Jeremy Friesen • May 19 '22

I love the semantic structure:

body
-- header
-- article
---- section
---- section

But how those are composable as well; I can have a header in my article. In using these semantics you're helping those that use assistive technology better access your content.

I'm also a big fan of some unused tags:

dfn
abbr
cite
dl

These elements provide great mechanisms for helping decompose jargon.

And as Ben wrote…the details tag (paired with it's "child" summary) is amazing.

How we do details in DEV

Yup, you can do it here using the liquid following syntax:

{% details Your summary here %}
The text that's "hidden" within the details.
{% enddetails %}

Ben Halpern • May 19 '22

Oh my, pre-HTML5 web dev was pretty brutal!

I am pretty amazed whenever I encounter an HTML feature which I just assumed would always be an awful hack, but now it is just a native feature.

The Details disclosure element comes to mind.

Daniel Schulz • May 19 '22

Uniformity: A simple, easy to use doctype, lowercase tags, no slash needed on self closing tags.
Also the separation of concerns. Table layout is deprecated, so are <font>, <center> and <marquee>. HTML has been sharpened for content markup.

Ayu Adiati • May 19 '22

I immediately got introduced to HTML5 since beginning of my journey.
So I'm not too familiar with the previous versions.

One example that I know, previously, we had <b> and <i> for bold and italics.
But since HTML5, they became <strong> and <em>.
One of definition of semantics is:

The study or science of meaning in languages.

So, we use <strong> to give more attention to the words/sentences and <em> when we want to emphasize words/sentences inside the tags.
These tags are not there to make them bold or italics, but they give meaning.

And therefore, there is also structure in semantics HTML to give meaning to the content in the whole page, such as headings (<h1> - <h6>), <header>, <main>, <section>, etc.

Semantics HTML also helps people who use screen reader. Because semantics HTML gives context for screen readers.

I hope these help 😊

Nicholas Stimpson • May 20 '22 • Edited

One example that I know, previously, we had <b> and <i> for bold and italics.
But since HTML5, they became <strong> and <em>.

Well, not really. First, <b>, <i>, <strong> and <em> have existed since the very first complete drafts of HTML. They're all the same age. HTML5 gave <b> and <i> semantics that they didn't have previously, and the semantics of <em> changed quite subtly, but otherwise nothing changed. What that meant was that if you want semantics-free bold and italics, it's necessary to use CSS: font-weight: bold and font-style: italic respectively.

Ayu Adiati • May 21 '22 • Edited

Thank you for the clarification! Appreciate it! 😃

Yes, I'm accustomed to use CSS as well if I want to apply bold or italics, also when I need to customize font sizes and untouch the headings 😊

Ben Butler • May 20 '22

Forms are so much better in HTML5! We have datetime types, we have native validation, there's... everything HTML lacked. It's a recognition that one of the primary uses of HTML is to submit data.