HTML5 and the future of the Web

There's been a lot of talk lately about the future of the Web. For instance, Wired had a cover story a couple months back proclaiming "The Web is Dead." And when I was at BlogWorld last month in Vegas, one of the main topics was how blogs are going to survive "In a world, where browsers are no longer..."

If anything is going to save the browser and the Web, it's going to be HTML5, and other improvements to the current HTML. HTML, if you don't know, stands for hypertext markup language and is the main set of tags we use to create Web pages and display information on a Web browser. But the standard we're using right now doesn't allow for cool things like video and animation without plugins like Flash, etc. That's why you can't watch Flash on your iPhone or iPad, because it's not part of the browser.

HTML5, which is coming to a browser near you very soon, has tags for animation, video and all sorts of cool interactive components that will blow your mind. The best example out there right now is an interactive music video by Arcade Fire called "The Wilderness Downtown." Our own Allison Keene mentioned this in a post last month, but it really deserves its own spotlight—it's that amazing.

The idea here is that you can help make the video by entering in your childhood snail mail address (or any other address you'd like). If Google maps has enough information/pics from your address, the HTML5 code will build the environment using several browsers of varying sizes and shapes. It's really amazing and something you MUST see to believe. If you don't have Chrome, you should install it first, because it makes the whole thing run much more smoothly.

Who knows what the future of the Web holds. But if HTML5 has anything to say about it, browsers will be around for a lot longer than the app kingdom hopes.