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Difference Between HTML and HTML5

Difference Between HTML and HTML5

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Overview

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the primary language for developing web pages. HTML5 is a new version of HTML with new functionalities with markup language with Internet technologies. HTML does not have support for video and audio but, HTML5 supports both video and audio.

Scope

  • This article explains HTML and HTML5 in details.
  • This article covers the diffrences between HTML and HTML5.
  • This article also includes the various attributes of these tags.

You must be visiting many websites every day. Let us talk about an online shopping website. We all visit them. You must have seen how well-structured they appear. First, there is the name of the website, then a nav bar showing various categories of items, and then all the items are arranged in the proper manner, each containing an image of the product, price, rating, etc.

But have you ever thought about how these websites are actually made?

Well, there are many languages, tools, and technologies behind a web page, but one thing that is common to all is HTML. HTML provides the basic structure to all of the websites. And HTML5 is the latest version of HTML being used these days.

So we are going to discuss the differences between HTML and HTML5. But to know the differences, we first need to know what HTML and HTML5 are.

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. Now let's understand what really HTML is, Thus before going to differences between HTML and HTML5, we will first understand what markup language is, then we will talk about what HTML and HTML5 are. And by that point, you yourself will be able to tell the differences between them.

Let’s begin!

What is Markup Language?

A markup language is the standard text-encoding system consisting of a set of symbols inserted in a text document to control its structure, formatting, or the relationship between its parts. The most widely used markup languages are SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language), HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), and XML (Extensible Markup Language).

A markup language in computer science stands for a language that uses human-readable language while coding instead of using typical technical syntax as used by all of the other programming languages. These human-readable features in the markup language are obtained by using tags.

Tags are used to define elements of a markup language program, For example: a tag that is used to define a title of a document is named as “Title tag” in markup languages. These tags tell the web server what the style and structure of a web document are. There are many markup languages available, and the most popular ones are HTML, HTML5, and XML.

What is HTML?

HTML stands for the Hypertext Markup Language. Thus HTML uses a text-based format to provide structure and style to the web page. As it is a markup language, it uses tags to define a structure and style. And Hypertext means that HTML can contain text that, when clicked, can redirect you to a new page. For example, whenever you click on any link on the web page, that link redirects you to the new web page. That functionality is known as Hypertext.

Thus HTML is used to make web pages and web applications by providing the structure and styling with the help of tags.

Structure of HTML

The whole HTML document is contained in a root tag known as HTML tag(<HTML> </HTML>), all the code is wrapped into an HTML tag.

The HTML document is divided into two parts:

  • HEAD
  • BODY

1. HEAD

Head contains the title, metadata, external links for CSS etc. Some of the tags present in head are:

2. BODY

Body tag contains all the elements that are displayed on the website. It contains all the text, images, links etc.

What is HTML5?

HTML5 is an advanced version of HTML. It contains all the features of HTML along with new tags like <video> , <audio> and <canvas>. There are also tags for including semantics, and these tags are <article>, <header>, <footer> etc. HTML5 improves the HTML to support the latest multimedia and new features, including graphics, music, etc.

Structure of HTML5

Like HTML, the structure of HTML5 is the same. It is also divided into two types:

  • Head
  • Body

1. HEAD

Head contains title, metadata, encoding style, external link, etc.

2. BODY

The body contains all the elements that are displayed on the website. Along with normal HTML tags there are also new tags like <header>, <footer>, <article>, <video>, <audio> etc.

HTML vs HTML5

HTML is the markup language used for building web pages. HTML5 is the fifth version of HTML. In HTML5, many of the older elements present in the HTML were modified, or new elements having better functionality were added.

Let us now briefly discuss the differences between HTML and HTML5 according to various aspects:

ParameterHTMLHTML5
Memory StorageCookies are used for the storage of temporary data.HTML5 uses the database connected with the current webpage to store the temporary data.
Browser CompatibilityIt runs smoothly on all old browsers. Eg: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefoxetc.It runs smoothly on all new browsers. Eg: Google Chrome version 61 and up, Mozilla Firefox version 4 to 63 etc.
Mobile FriendlinessIt is not mobile friendly.It is mobile friendly
Multimedia SupportExternal plugins like Adobe flash reader are required to use audio, video etc.Audio and video can easily be used by using tags like <audio> , <video>.
JavaScript SupportJavaScript is not allowed to run on the browser directly.Allows JavaScript to run on the browser directly by using JS Web worker API.
Getting location of user using browserCannot get the true location of the user by using a web browser.Can easily get the location of a user using a browser with the help of JS GeoLocation API.
Complicated SyntaxesSyntaxes for doc type declaration or the character encoding is too long and complicated. Eg: To set character encoding in HTML, the syntax is: <meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″> Syntaxes are short and simple. Eg: To set character encoding in HTML, the syntax is: <meta charset=UTF-8″>
Semantics and Sub structure defining tagsDo not contain any tag that can define the semantics (the difference between the meaning of the text or the relationship between different types of text. For eg: Which text is more important than other) of the text or can divide the structure of the document into sub parts.Contains the tags like < article >, < section > etc. that defines semantics of the text. Also there are tags like < header >, < footer >, < nav > etc. that define the substructure of the document.

Advantages and Disadvantages of HTML

Advantages:

  • Easy and simple to use.
  • Widely supported by almost all the web browsers.
  • Standard language for making the structure of the web pages.
  • Code is very lightweight, thus providing better speed online.
  • Free to use. And it can be run on browsers only, so there is no need to buy any external software.

Disadvantages:

  • Only capable of making static web pages that do not contain any functionality or dynamic content.
  • Due to complex and long syntaxes, there are multiple lines of code required even to make any web component.
  • There is no feature of syntax error detection. Thus if any error is made while coding, it can only be detected after seeing the output. This could be very harmful if the code is long and complicated.
  • The security features of HTML are almost none or very limited.
  • The HTML code is tough to understand and manage.

Advantages and Disadvantages of HTML5

Advantages:

  • There are many attributes present in HTML5 that were not present in HTML. E.g., data-, offline, onabort, onblur etc.
  • It provides support for audio, video and other multimedia contents by using tags like <audio>,<video>,<canvas> etc.
  • There are many page layouts options available in HTML5. In HTML, you can only find page layouts tags like div, span, etc. But in HTML5, there are many more tag options available like header, footer, article, section, etc.
  • HTML5 supports Search Engine Optimisation(SEO). Search engine optimization helps the websites to know about the popularity of their content and also provides insights on how to improve the content to increase the traffic on the websites.
  • HTML5 provides more flexible storage options. HTML used the concept of cookies to store temporary data, but HTML5 is capable of using a user-side database like SQL. It also allows the user to view previously visited page data in offline mode.
  • HTML5 eliminates the need to write multiple codes for multiple platforms. The code written in HTML5 supports mobile or tablet layout also. Thus it provides multi-platform compatibility.

Disadvantages:

  • Can only be run on modern browsers. Not compatible with older versions of various browsers, e.g., Google Chrome version less than 60, Mozilla version 2 and 3.6, etc.
  • There is no standard video format available. For example, H.264 video format is supported by all the web browsers but not by Firefox; similarly, Ogg Theory video format is supported by all the web browsers but not by Explorer.
  • The multi-platform support provided by HTML5 sometimes leads to more complex code. Also, it becomes necessary to run all web applications in all formats to check the credibility of the code.
  • HTML5 is still in the development phase; therefore, it might appear that a few features that worked before are not working now. Thus developers need to stay updated while using HTML5.

Conclusion

  • HTML is a standard language for writing web pages.
  • HTML5 is a better version of HTML by overcoming some disadvantages of HTML like multimedia incompatibility or multi-platform incompatibility.
  • HTML5 is a language of the modern browser, but in order to become proficient in using HTML5, one needs to know the basics.
  • The first is HTML. Thus a person aspiring to become a Web developer is advised to start by learning HTML and then making the transition to HTML5.