HTML vs. HTML5

HTML is sometimes referred to as HTML5, but are they the same?

Yes and no.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the standard language used for building websites, released in the early '90s.

  • HTML version 1 was released in 1993
  • HTML 2 came out in 1995
  • HTML 3 in January, 1997
  • HTML 4 in December, 1997

For the next 17+ years, HTML4 was the HTML standard, but then finally in October 2014, HTML5 was released and has since then been the HTML standard.

HTML5 is similar to HTML4 but it has many more features that provide both a better developer and end-user experience.

For example:

  • HTML5 web pages can store data locally in the user’s browser
  • HTML5 has native support for video and audio
  • HTML supports WebGL and SVG
  • And much more.

It doesn’t matter if you say HTML or HTML5, but in my opinion, it’s redundant to say or write HTML5, since there’s only one acceptable standard to write HTML today, and that is the HTML5 way.

The newest standard of HTML can be found here: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/


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Kofi

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