Why You Should Learn HTML5 Now Before It Explodes In Popularity

I feel HTML5 today's "Web 2.0" of a few years ago. It's an overblown term that doesn't really capture what it is. CSS3 is cool. Canvas is cool. More native video is cool, I guess. The other new html elements are... ok... but quite frankily I'm fine with <div>s and changing them to <sections> seems annoying more so than helpful. HTML5 doesn't seem to bring anything radically new; most of what it allows could be done before, just with more workarounds and quirks. It's being hyped up as some next great thing, and not really a radical new development, it's much more incremental really.

And plenty of people are still using IE8 and Windows XP, and will for the next few years, so I don't think it's really more critical to learn HTML5 than over HTML4. Actually, it's hardly even possible to learn one without the other.

> If there was one programming language I’d recommend to learn for the long-term, it is HTML5.

I would recommend going a step further and learning Object Oriented HTML5, no point just learning to program in plain HTML5. /s

I used to get upset about it, but now I've just come to accept that when people talk about "HTML5", they don't mean HTML. They mean CSS3, JavaScript, all of the APIs that come with the HTML5 spec, etc.

This graphic sums up pretty nicely what "HTML5" actually encompasses: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f7/HTML5-API...

To "toastedzergling"'s comment also (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6007986), the term "HTML5" seems to always be used in the wrong way. People use it as a buzz word, when they don't actually realize what they are really describing. In the context I usually hear it, they typically mean CSS3 or javascript features, not actual HTML5 features.

While I think HTML5 does offer some exciting features, I also think people need to know the differences between what HTML5 is and more importantly, what it is not.

Because even the graphic they show in the article (“HTML5″ is currently the #1 job trend based on the fastest growing keywords found in online job postings...) says just how recruiters and job listings use that specific term. 90% of the time I see that used, it's a keyword as just wanting you to know general HTML, but they use the phrase HTML5 over "HTML" because it sounds better.

For kicks, this site probably marks the biggest confusion that I always hear with HTML5: http://iscss3partofhtml5.com/ spoiler alert: NO.

EDIT: No clue why I'm being down-voted? As the perspective of a front-end designer who just recently was very active in the job market, this was ALWAYS the case. None of the companies were actually using true HTML5 features or wanted to use true HTML5 features, they were just using CSS3 or jQuery. Obviously it was just a recruiter trying to use buzz terms to describe knowing general HTML.

I'd rather recommend learning to make Google Glass apps.