HTML5 technology is harnessing developers with a very unique way to be ‘everywhere’.

Unlike, the old Java days (1996-1997) where we thought that ‘write once run everywhere’ is going to be the future. This time, all the major browsers (yes, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and even IE) are supporting it. You can build today web apps that looks and act like ‘native’ apps  by using HTML5 features. Not only, you get the option to target iOS, Andriod, PalmOS, Windows7 phones etc’ with great user experience you code base should be ‘write once’. It’s not only the smart decision for start ups and independent developers but rather for all type of companies. Even gorillas like Netflix is taking this direction. Main features that you might want to checkout are:

• Geo location
• Video (without flash…) – I’ve told you… it’s 2011.
• Audio (again – I know you don’t believe me but try it with out flash).
• File Access is an API for reading file content in JavaScript. Here is a good article about the subject “Exploring the FileSystem APIs“. It give you all the nice simple examples to start handling files from your Chrome browser and soon… you will be able to do the same with your ChromeBook, nice ahh?!
• CSS3 – extensions to CSS3 including: 2D Transformations, Transitions, 3D Transforms and WebFonts to name just a few.
• 2D Canvas – feel like a painter for a day.
• WebGL – games/games/games and more amazing stuff from Google earth.
• SVG – just like in iOS.
• Application cache, localStorage e.g. localStorage["name"] = username;. Unfortunately, present implementations only support string-to-string mappings, so you need to serialise and deserialise other data structures. You can do so using JSON.stringify() and JSON.parse().
  More ‘real life’ option to store stuff locally: Web SQL Database gives you all the power – and effort – of a structured SQL relational database. Indexed Database is somewhere in between Web Storage and Web SQL Database. Like Web Storage, it’s a straightforward key-value mapping, but it supports indexes like those of relational databases, so searching objects matching a particular field is fast; you don’t have to manually iterate through every object in the store.

If you want to dive into this new world, I recommend two strong sites:

1. Dive into HTML5
2. HTML5 Rocks

Both are giving very good explanations, tutorial and examples, so have fun. For the full experience you might want to use Chrome browser.

This year, Google I/O was around two main subjects: Andriod and Chrome. I’ve went to see some talks on both themes. Here are some good Google I/O Talks I’ve been this year are:

• Mobile Web Development: From Zero to Hero – there are good slides that show you (in a nutshell) what are the main pain points in today world and how to solve them. Another short but good presentation on jQuery mobile.
• Good video from Web Fonts are changing the Web. Learn why.
• Another good video for gamers “WebGL Techniques and Performance” and if you like to see what is going to be the next gen of HTML5 games (and you live in the bay area) – come check out this event.
• Creating Accessible Interactive Web Apps using HTML5
• I didn’t saw this one – “Beyond JavaScript: Programming the Web with Native Client”  – but I heard it was great.

HTML5 Showcase for Web Developers: The Wow and the How