You've probably seen articles saying things like "HTML 5 will change everything," "the war between Flash and HTML5," and "HTML 5 will kill Flash." My opinion is that most of this is the same steady stream of hype that keeps the publication pipeline flowing. HTML 5 is of major importance and represents a fundamental upgrade and evolution of the foundations of the web. However, like many such technological advances, much of this is occurring and will occur under the surface with few knowing much about the connection between the underlying technology and its manifestations. Knowing a little more, and separating the hype from the reality, can be interesting and help you take advantage of new opportunities. 

I recall two articles within days of each other based on the same study stating 50% RSS adoption: one concluded RSS was a hit, the other a flop. Both the study and citing articles missed the fact that by this time anyone who used an Internet computer was using RSS even if they didn't know they were using it. The survey questions only got a "yes" if people knew they were using RSS and most people didn't know what RSS was. It's fairly certain that within a few years any software that displays or creates web content will use HTML 5 even if people using the software have never heard of HTML 5.

HTML is the language web pages are written in. HTML 5 is the W3C standard for the latest and greatest web page language. HTML 5 is already enriching our experience on the web, being used in several browsers and web software, and will soon be the foundation of almost all web software.

Most people won't know or need to know anything about HTML 5 as most people don't know or need to know anything about HTML. Most people just click, it works and go on with more important things. However, most anyone creating web pages or building web page associated software will be directly influenced and become familiar with the new features of HTML.

It's a major upgrade to the rules under the hood of what the web can do and how that will affect everyone. Just like the rules of chemistry are fundamental to how our world works and looks, HTML is fundamental to how the web works and looks. Getting some inside knowledge on the HTML 5 upgrade that we're in the initial stages of will be a competitive advantage that opens and suggests opportunities to many individuals and businesses.

It's important to understand the difference between how a language is used and the specifications for a language, and this applies for a human language like English and a technical language like HTML. Spoken and written English and English specified by a dictionary are not the same. They influence each other. Some spoken/written words make it into the dictionary and some don't. Changes in the dictionary influence how people speak/write.

It's similar with technical languages. Maturation and official adoption of the HTML 5 standard represents a major consolidation of many experiments and mutations of existing HTML usage over the year. Major new capabilities will become mainstream standard practice supported across all browsers and a new round experiments and mutations will be enabled on top of the new standard.

My impression is there are two major new areas in HTML: multimedia support and semantic web support. Audio/video rich media capabilities currently using browser plug-ins like Flash, QuickTime and others are supported directly in HTML 5. If you don't know what the semantic web is and you're interested in the web or work with the web, please take at least 15 minutes to get the idea: this is something you should know about. You can search this blog for "semantic" to find a couple of posts with links to more information.

My bet is the semantic capabilities will be more important. I don't see anything in the HTML 5 multimedia additions that Flash doesn't already do and Flash can do a lot more. Flash is already almost universal. Certainly HTML 5 multimedia will give incremental progress in seamless web multimedia capabilities cheaply and easily. It's good to have more than one way to do things and I'm sure Adobe's HTML 5 tools will be among the best available. Most everyone except the plug-in vendors would be happy if HTML 5 eventually makes these plug-ins unnecessary but I doubt that will ever happen and if it did I think the end user experience would be basically the same.

The semantic web is transforming the quality and precision of Internet information. It's science fiction becoming fact before our eyes. It has the ability to leverage all the web pages and databases on the Internet for independent, autonomous, and distributed applications of all types. Instead of Internet content being just what you see is what you get, the semantic web structures Internet with meaning allowing unlimited, yet precise, processing, re-organizing, re-purposing and combining of this data in ways never foreseen. Amazing capabilities have already been demonstrated on the very small islands of Internet semantic content already available. RSS could be considered one tiny simple example of a type of semantic web content. The possibilities when all Internet content is semantic are stunning. HTML 5 represents an important link between useable display and content generation tools and the arcane protocols of the semantic web.

The article "Forget Everything You Know About Video Advertising" proves the opposite of its title. In advertising a flashy title and package are the age-old standards of advertising. However, they are easy to come by commodities. What's under the hood provides the lasting value after the consumer has bought the hype and thrown away the package.

Here are some resources if you're interested in learning more about HTML5:

Wikipedia: a good place to start

O'Reilly Answers HTML 5 Overview: good one page overview

HTML5 and The Future of the Web: great introduction with lots of good links.

Mark Pilgrim's Dive into HTML 5: Mark is a master, but as well as a great place to learn how to actually use HTML 5, there are some fascinating insights into what it is, what it's good for and the role of standards.

Examples, demos and tutorials are sometimes the best way to learn and see the possibilities:

htmltutorial.net

html5demos.com

html5doctor.com