WC3 released an updated working draft to guide web designers with the use of HTML5 and some comparisons to the previous version of HTML. There are a number of new changes that greatly extends the language by introducing new, fancy features but also it drops some elements from the language altogether. HTML5 is considered in development, as stated in the January 13th document from WC3. While HTML5 may be dropping some outdated elements from the web design language, older browsers may continue to support them, which means there won't be a clear cut off point for those elements.
A few examples of elements that HTML5 will not support:
- frames and frameset
- applet
- center (This can be achieved other ways using CSS)
- u
- font
- strike
- blink (thank god!)
- big
A few elements introduced to the HTML5 vernacular:
- header, footer and nav - these common structural guides provide definition to introductory elements or navigation sections, etc.
- hgroup - a header of a section
- aside - a piece of content that is only partially related to the main content focus of the web page
- article - defines an area that is an independent piece of content - useful for blogs and news websites
- audio & video - multimedia content will now be given a rightful place in the HTML lexicon. It will also allow web designers to script their own custom interfaces for working with multimedia content.
- time - defines date and time
- datalist - good for creating combo boxes within the new list attribute
- progress - marks the completion of a task -- Move over Flash!