All the buzz these days when seems to be about HTML5. Web designers and techies everywhere have very strong feelings about HTML5 and either love it or hate it depending on who you talk to.

First let’s take a look at what HTML5 actually is and what it is used for. HTML is a markup language used to design and layout web pages. HTML5 is a new version of that language that has more tags and hence more design options.

Most people can agree more design options is a good thing. The controversy comes in mostly because certain companies like Apple are acting as if HTML5 is a standard when the reality is no browser fully supports it yet.

Essentially that means that for people using certain elements of it they will look nothing like they intended to most of the people who view the pages. So while HTML5 and its applications are definitely going to offer us some much cooler websites it is just not practical yet to use for your web designs.

We tested out a few of the most popular browsers to see how ready they are for HTML5 and this is what we found out. For this test we used http://www.html5test.com which offers an HTML5 testing page and a rating system that goes up to 400 points depending on how many HTML5 features are already implemented into the browser.

Chrome 10.0 was the big winner coming in at 301 points out of 400 possible. They have already implemented most of the functionality to be a compatible HTML5 browser. In addition, many of the features that are not added are partially added. So Google Chrome is definitely way out in front in the race for HTML compatible browsers.

Firefox 4.0 is next in line and they scored pretty decently getting 249 out 400 possible points. They are still missing a lot of key elements but got bonus points for the audio and video implementation as well as their parsing rules.

Internet Explorer 8 is pretty far behind the curve. IE scored a total of 32 points out of 400. Pretty dismal showing for what used to be the top internet browser in the world. Internet Explorer has been playing catch up with rendering design since the implementation of CSS and their poor showing here tells us it does not seem like much will change in the future.

So those are the statistics. At the moment the only HTML5 browser that is going to get you very far is Google Chrome and until browsers catch up with the newer language it is probably a good idea to use it sparingly in your designs until it actually is a true and tested standard.

View this in the Serbo-Croatian language. Courtesy of Anja Skrba of webhostinggeeks.com

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