This version of HTML is being developed by the WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group), whose stated goal is to continue evolution of the web. Since they're designing HTML 5 with web developers in mind, they've included several features that will make our lives much easier.
One example is the new doctype tag. In HTML 4, the doctype tag looks something like this:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
In HTML 5, the doctype tag looks like this:
<!doctype html>
… which is far easier to remember. HTML 5 has also streamlined the character set definition code. Here's the old way:
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1">
… and here's the HTML 5 way:
<meta charset="UTF-8">
Again, the new version is much easier to remember.
HTML 5 has a number of new tags designed to assist with layout. Most designers use div tags to lay out their pages, giving them names to keep the sections distinct, which usually results in dozens of nested div tags all over the page. The new HTML has tags like <section>, <header>, <footer>, and <nav> to break the page into clearly defined parts. It's helpful for web developers but even better for users with accessibility software, which can easily bog down when describing a page held together with dozens of div tags.
HTML 5 finally does away with several tags that have long been deprecated (and which you are hopefully not using anyway!) Examples are all the old frame tags (<frame>,<frameset> and <noframes>) as well as all the formatting tags whose functions are best handled through CSS (<font>, <center>, <basefont>, <big>, etc.). A number of formatting attributes are also gone (align, background and bgcolor on the <body> tag, most of the table formatting attributes like border, height and width, etc.). If you haven't already cleared these items from your sites, now would be the time.
Article source: http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art4107.asp
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