HTML 5 - Flexing The Muscles!

I had an awesome opportunity to attend HTML 5.0 crash course taught by Peter Lubbers, the co-author of the Pro HTML5 Programming book. I am very awed to learn that HTML 5 is designed to be very powerful. It definitely changes on how web app will be built. Here are some key points from the training:

• Cleaner HTML Codes –  It introduces some new  HTML tags such as SECTION, HEADER, FOOTER, ARTICLE that will make HTML codes more readable (moving away from general DIVs to define page sections)
• Improved Offline Experience –  It allows programmer to define HTML files that should be stored in the desktop for offline browsing experience (instead of depending on the browser to decide for you).
• Richer HTML Native Data Type – Some new rich data type such as email, calendar, URL will be available. It means we don't need to build masking, JavaScript validation code, etc to handle the user experience/data quality. 
• Better Graphic, Audio & Video Support – The Canvas object will provide drawable region in the HTML code. It allow programmer to embed SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) in the document, embed audio & video file without plugging and allow JavaScript to control the audio/video properties.
• Improve Browser Scalability with "Work Workers"– Heavy JavaScript execution sometimes caused browser to freeze. With Work Workers, the browser can spawn background workers running the script in parallel to the main page (similar to thread) to avoid the browser performance issue.
• Better Storage Management – In addition to cookies, now JavaScript can manage store values with “local”  or “session” storage. Value is stored and retrieved with Key (similar to map data structure).
• Secure "Cross-Site Scripting" – JavaScript will be allowed to make cross-site scripting with supported server-side configuration to whitelist origins.
• Full Duplex Communication with Web Socket – JavaScript codes can can be transmit & receive data concurrently in a single connection.  

This is very exciting. I can't wait until the day where major browsers fully support HTML 5!