The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has finalized the HTML5 standard, bringing the basic Web technology into the era of mobile devices and Internet applications. The HTML Working Group today published HTML5 specificationas or W3C Recommendation. This specification defines the fifth major revision of the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), the format used to build Web pages and applications, and the cornerstone of the Open Web Platform.

Web and mobile developers have been using parts of the HTML5 specification for several years, but the finished specification ensures developers that the code they develop for the Web will work going forward.

"Today we think nothing of watching video and audio natively in the browser, and nothing of running a browser on a phone," said Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. "We expect to be able to share photos, shop, read the news, and look up information anywhere, on any device. Though they remain invisible to most users, HTML5 and the Open Web Platform are driving these growing user expectations."

HTML5 brings to the Web video and audio tracks without needing plugins; programmatic access to a resolution-dependent bitmap canvas, which is useful for rendering graphs, game graphics, or other visual images on the fly; native support for scalable vector graphics (SVG) and math (MathML); annotations important for East Asian typography (Ruby); features to enable accessibility of rich applications; and much more. It helps achieve the "write once, deploy anywhere" promise of HTML5 and the Open Web platform.

With today’s publication of the Recommendation, software implementers benefit from Royalty-Free licensing commitments from over sixty companies under W3C’s Patent Policy.