HTML 5 (formerly spelled HTML5[a]) is a software solution stack that defines the properties and behaviors of web page content by implementing a markup based pattern to it.
HTML 5 is the fifth and current major version of the HTML standard, and subsumes XHTML. It currently exists in two standardized forms: HTML 5.2 Recommendation[4] by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, a broad coalition of organizations), intended primarily for Web content developers; and HTML Living Standard[5] by WHATWG (a small consortium of four browser vendors), intended primarily for browser developers, though it also exists in an abridged Web developer version.[6] There are minor conflicts between the two groups' specifications.
HTML 5 was first released in public-facing form on 22 January 2008,[7] with a major update and "W3C Recommendation" status in October 2014.[2][8] Its goals are to improve the language with support for the latest multimedia and other new features; to keep the language both easily readable by humans and consistently understood by computers and devices such as Web browsers, parsers, etc., without XHTML's rigidity; and to remain backward-compatible with older software. HTML 5 is intended to subsume not only HTML 4, but also XHTML 1 and DOM Level 2 HTML;[9] the HTML 4 and XHTML specs were announced as superseded by HTML 5.2 on 27 March 2018.[10]
HTML 5 includes detailed processing models to encourage more interoperable implementations; it extends, improves and rationalizes the markup available for documents, and introduces markup and application programming interfaces (APIs) for complex web applications.[11] For the same reasons, HTML 5 is also a candidate for cross-platform mobile applications, because it includes features designed with low-powered devices in mind.
