The HTML Web Development Trifecta: HTML5, CSS and JavaScript

The future of Web design lies within three technologies: HTML5, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript. These technologies used together provide Web pages that easily adapt to smartphones, tablets, gaming devices and smart TVs, as well as to traditional PCs.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs provided a great argument for using these technologies in his famous “Thoughts on Flash” blog. (Adobe Flash is a browser plug-in that provides multimedia such as video, animation, interactive games and audio.)

 “…we strongly believe that all standards pertaining to the web should be open. Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript — all open standards. Apple’s mobile devices all ship with high performance, low power implementations of these open standards. HTML5, the new web standard that has been adopted by Apple, Google and many others, lets web developers create advanced graphis, typography, animations and transitions without relying on third party browser plug-ins (like Flash). HTML5 is completely open and controlled by a standards committee, of which Apple is a member.” 

HTML5, CSS and JavaScript are sometimes called the “HTML5 family.”

• HTML5: Markup language used for structuring and presenting Web page content 
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS):  Style sheet language that provides the formatting and “look” of a Web page or document written in a markup language 
• JavaScript:  Scripting language that provides dynamic, interactive capabilities to Web pages 

Traditional and mobile Web development will likely focus on these three technologies as HTML5 adoption grows. Now is a good time to become familiar with them!