Some Cool HTML5 Features

Day News

March 1, 2013

We all know that HTML5 is the new revision of the famous computer language for web creation. We also know that it have some new cool stuff that makes the online community more exciting and fun yet simple but only few people only know of such things. In this article we will talk about some of these features embedded in the html5 version that is new in the web community which includes the input validation, autofocus attribute, audio and video support and the regular expression.

The first in the list is the HTML5 input validation feature which makes the web form coding simpler and less strenuous. Under the input validation is the setting of the ‘required’ attribute to the input tag that defines it as a required field.  Another part of the input validation is the determination of the entered string to some values like ’email’, ‘url’, ‘number’, ‘tel’, ‘date’ and with some others. And the last but not the least is the html5 support for the slider option which displays a slider bar instead of a text field and is useful for more ‘analog’ inputs. All of them except the last one mentioned is able to display a warning message that is triggered when their conditions are not met.

The autofocus feature in html5 version is able to automatically select an element upon page load. This is through the use of the ‘autofocus’ attribute that is embedded in the element code and is very useful when used in the pages that has a main purpose of collecting data from its user. This attribute can only be used in the input fields, text area, and buttons and other elements that serve as a vital part of data collection and cannot be used to other element types. Using it to other element types will only be of no difference than the same element type without it.

This is one of the most powerful features that is new to html and is a great help in website creation. A programmer does not need any more to use third party video and audio provider which sometimes takes time to develop. It can be implemented using the ‘video’ and ‘audio’ tags when you need to implement both then you will use the video tag for it also to support both. But for you to enable the video to play in all kinds of browsers and mobile devices, you need to convert a single video to ‘mp4’ with ‘H.264’ video codec for it to play also in some mobile devices, ‘webm’ and ogg videos for other browser support.

HTML5 also implemented their version of regular expressions which is very useful in the aspect of form validation.  This feature is made possible by the ‘pattern’ attribute where you can type your desired regular expressions and can be of use only in the ‘input’ element. You can use regular expressions when you want to test different values that are not available in the list of default validation entries.

There are many more HTML5 functions and tweaks that are available so discover them now to empower your website.