Enterprise Web Development

Appendix A. Selected HTML5 APIs

This appendix is a brief review of selected HTML5 APIs. HTML5 is just a commonly used term for a combination of HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and several new APIs that appeared during the last several years. Five years ago, people were using the term Web 2.0 to define modern-looking applications. These days, HTML5 is almost a household name, and we’ll go along with it. But HTML5 is about the same old development in JavaScript plus the latest advances in HTML and CSS.

This appendix is more of an overview of selected APIs that are included in the HTML5 specification—namely, Web Messaging, Web Storage, Application Cache, IndexedDB, localStorage, Web Workers, and History APIs.

Note

To understand the code samples included in this appendix, you must be familiar with JavaScript and some monitoring tools such as Chrome Developer Tools. We assume that you are familiar with the materials covered in the bonus online chapter.

Does Your Browser Support HTML5?

The majority of modern web browsers already support the current version of the HTML5 specification, which will become a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standard in 2014. The question is whether the users of your web application have a modern browser installed on their device. There are two groups of users who will stick to outdated browsers for some time:

• Less technically savvy people might be afraid of installing any new software on their PCs, especially people of the older generation. “John, after the last visit of ...