HTML5

Technology & Computing abbreviation · Internet & Web

HTML5 stands for HyperText Markup Language 5, an Internet & web abbreviation.

The fifth major revision of HTML, finalized as a W3C Recommendation in October 2014, which added native audio and video, the canvas element, semantic tags such as article and nav, new form inputs and APIs for offline storage. It replaced Flash for most interactive web content.

Example: The game was rebuilt in HTML5 so it runs on phones without any plug-in.

Usage notes

Work began at the WHATWG in 2004 after browser makers disagreed with the W3C's XHTML 2.0 direction. "HTML5" also became a marketing label for the whole bundle of modern web technologies, including CSS3 and new JavaScript APIs. Since 2019 there is only the HTML Living Standard, so the term is now mostly historical or casual. Its doctype declaration shrank to the short "DOCTYPE html".

Related abbreviations

More Internet & web abbreviations

• FCP – First Contentful Paint
• FID – First Input Delay
• FOUC – Flash of unstyled content
• gTLD – Generic top-level domain
• HLS – HTTP Live Streaming
• HTML – HyperText Markup Language
• IDN – Internationalized domain name
• iframe – Inline frame
• INP – Interaction to Next Paint
• ISR – Incremental static regeneration
• Jamstack – JavaScript, APIs and Markup
• JS – JavaScript

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