HTML5 is no radical departure from it’s predecessors. It offers aids to better semantic markup and embedded content, useful form validation, and a little less depreciated cruft. Most importantly it provides the platform for CSS3, about which more in a later article. But the best thing about html5 is that you can have it now, without sacrificing browser compatibility. Take a look over here where I’ve recoded Ponderwell’s site in html5. That was an afternoon’s work, and the result was sufficiently encouraging that I think I’ll be using html5 exclusively from now on. It works just fine even in IE6 – or rather, it works as well as any site ever does in that horrible browser.