The up and coming standard for website code is buzzing around the internet with most people saying its better than everything that came before it. However, their opinions are based solely on the fact this HTML 5 contains new tags that can embed video, sound, drawing areas and some other nice features without lots of Javascript, Flash or other addons and this would be nice if it were true.

When talking about website development everyone considers the staples of web technologies as HTML/XHTML, CSS and Java Script. This is how websites have evolved over time and we all understand the individual uses of each technology and therefore when to substitute them for something else that would be better. For example, rather than coding something to display a set of data using a lot of the above technologies you could quickly use an XML and a transformation file with a dash of CSS to make it look nice. These technologies fit together in different ways.

The problem? “HTML 5” is not HTML! All of the nice new tags require the use of javascript and do nothing useful on their own. Instead of improving mark up language this “HTML 5” standard is forcing the developer into a specific way of doing things. No longer will you have the choice of using a mix of languages to target a specific need because you will be locked in to their choices.

Is it good? Is it bad?.. I think it is a bad idea.