ExtJS.com has put together a nice article explaining HMTL5 in brief (Click here for the article) while diveintohtml5.org gives a detailed explanation on the features.

As the article puts it, HTML5 is just a part of the family of  specifications that people end up calling as HTML5.

Some of the highlights of the HTML family are as follows:

• LocalStorage,  a client-side key-value database, meaning it is stored in the users browser (similar to cookies but it’s designed for larger quantities of information)
  
• Graphics support with the <canvas> tag (it is a JavaScript controlled drawing area)
• Video and Audio support with the <video> and <audio> tags
• New structural elements like <nav>, <header> , <footer>,<aside>, <article>, <section> tags

• New inline elements to mark things like time and numbers (<mark>, <time>, <meter>,<progress> tags)
  
• Web Workers – enables JavaScript to work on the background and allows spawning of multiple threads
• Offline Web Application – support to run web applications offline
• Geolocation – api to  support getting location information using IP address, wireless connection, etc
• CSS3

Email from Google

Also when opening Facebook from IE7 browser I got a box on the top suggesting me to upgrade to IE8. Earlier last year similar phase out warnings had started to appear on YouTube as well.

I am sure seeing this would have brought smiles to the faces of  many web developers, as writing JavaScript code to work on IE6 is one of the most painful things in front end web development. So many things just don’t work.

This move by Google and Facebook is very welcome. It will definitely help in  the growth of HTML 5 and advanced JavaScripting.

Some organization have long been running on IE6 and upgrading the browser is a big task for their IT departments. No wonder IE6 still commands as much as 20% of the browser market. It is only such actions on part of major websites, that can shake the organizations to make the shift.

One of the other reasons for phasing out IE6 is its security vulnerability. As this Zdnet blog points out, earlier last month Microsoft had admitted that the attack from China on Google and some other US companies had exploited a hole in IE6, which was also present in IE7 and IE8.