Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
HTML5 - a game changer
Back when the World Wide Web was first introduced, its founders had one thing in
mind—information exchange. Later, HTML was developed, with the goal of describing
text documents. Again, the main aim was to aid the exchange and distribution of text
documents.
Although HTML5 is fully backwards compatible, and still provides a terrific paradigm
for information distribution, it is also designed with applications in mind. Today the
Web is no longer used only for information exchange. People are now using the Web
as a means to find entertainment—to watch movies, listen to the radio, and especially
to play complete, full-featured video games.
HTML5 is a game changer in at least three ways, namely its wide adoption, its power-
ful capabilities, and the fact that it brings its features right to the browser—no plug-ins
required. These three ways are explained as follows:
Wide adoption : Not only are there over a billion people using the World
Wide Web, but just about any device connected to it is able to execute
HTML5 code. That means your program HTML5 games to be played on
desktop computers, laptops, smart mobile phones, tablets, and even tele-
vision sets.
Powerful capabilities : Before HTML5, many commonly used tasks and
features had to be programmed every time by developers—the drag-and-
drop functionality, form validation, custom font faces, and so on. With
HTML5, all of those things (and much more) are done for you by the web
browser. You no longer need tens or hundreds of lines of code to create a
drag-and-drop effect. The browser makes that job trivial for you, the deve-
loper.
No plug-ins : While many of the features that HTML5 bring to the table
had already bee seen before by means of third-party software, such as
Macromedia Flash (which was later acquired by Adobe), or Java applets.
The challenge with using these technologies as part of your web applica-
tions was that users had to install (and frequently upgrade) plug-ins that
extended the browser's native capabilities. No only that, but developers
also needed to learn and maintain at least two separate code bases, writ-
ten in different languages. HTML5 solves that problem by cooking its own
powerful feature set, allowing users to have a similar, and often better ex-
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