Elektrotehniški vestnik 77(5): 273-280, 2010 Electrotechnical Review: Ljubljana, Slovenija New technologies for web development Grega Jakus 1 , Matija Jekovec 2 , Sašo Tomažič 1 and Jaka Sodnik 1 1 Univerza v Ljubljani, Fakulteta za elektrotehniko, Tržaška 25, Ljubljana 2 Klaro d.o.o. Peruzzijeva 84b, Ljubljana E-pošta: grega.jakus@fe.uni-lj.si, matija.jekovec@klaro.si, saso.tomazic@fe.uni-lj.si, jaka.sodnik@fe.uni-lj.si Abstract. The paper gives an overview of the new features of web technologies. The general idea of the new ver- sion of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), i.e. HTML5, and other tools presented in this paper is the formal specification and the establishment of uniform solutions for technologies and functionalities which have already been in use through various hacks and plug-ins proposed by web developers. Many of these functionalities will now be implemented in browsers. The applications can access these functionalities through newly defined application programming interfaces. The latter include support for multimedia, dynamic graphic rendering, geolocation, mul- tithreading, local data storage etc. HTML5 also introduces semantic markup, which can be used for marking the document structure as well as its elements and data. The new version of HTML enforces strict separation of the page content from its style. The styling can only be done using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) language. The new CSS version, i.e. CSS3, has a modular structure, in which different modules define different styling features. The development cycles of the individual modules are independent as well as their support and implementation in vari- ous browsers. Keywords: World Wide Web, HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3 Nove tehnologije za razvoj na svetovnem spletu Povzetek. Članek podaja pregled novosti na področju spletnih tehnologij. Eden glavnih ciljev pri razvoju nove različice jezika HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language), t. j. HTML5, sta poenotenje in formalna specifikacija nekaterih funkcionalnosti, ki so sicer na spletu že prisotne v obliki lastniških vtičnikov in razvijalskih praks. Številne izmed omenjenih funkcionalnosti bodo odslej vgrajene v spletnih brskalnikih. Različne aplikacije bodo do njih lahko dostopale preko aplikacijskih programskih vmesnikov, definiranih na novo. Ti ponujajo podporo multimedijskim vsebinam, dinamičnemu prikazovanju grafike, geolokacijskim aplikacijam, večnitnosti, lokalnemu shranjevanju podatkov itd. HTML5 uvaja tudi semantično označevanje, ki ga lahko uporabimo za določitev strukture spletnega dokumenta ter pomena elementov in vsebine v njem. Nova različica jezika HTML vsiljuje striktno ločitev zapisa strukture in vsebine spletne strani od njene oblike. Oblikovanje spletne strani je tako odslej mogoče izključno z uporabo jezika CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Nova različica tega jezika, t. j. CSS3, ima modularno zasnovo, pri kateri različni moduli določajo različne oblikovne lastnosti. Razvoj posameznih modulov je med seboj neodvisen, prav tako pa je neodvisna tudi njihova podpora s strani spletnih brskalnikov. Ključne besede: svetovni splet, HTML5, JavaScript, CSS3 1 Introduction The concept of the World Wide Web is inseparably tied with the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) - the language for describing web pages. HTML uses markup tags for describing structural semantics of a web page by denoting its elements: sections, paragraphs, head- ings, tables, lists, interactive forms and others. Elements with their corresponding attributes can be nested one in another, forming a typical tree structure. HTML enables also the inclusion of external resources into web docu- ments, such as images, videos and other objects, which also become parts of a web page. One of the good practices in modern web develop- ment are separate definitions of structure and style. The general structure of web pages and their content are defined in HTML, while its final presentation and style are in the domain of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Such separation enables better flexibility and control over the final appearance of a web page and it also re- duces the complexity of HTML record and eliminates the redundancy in style definitions. The separation of the content from the style enables more web pages to share the same style and also a single page to use many different styles at the same time. Besides CSS, a scripting language JavaScript is often used in combination with HTML. JavaScript is interpreted by a web browser and provides web pages with interactivity and dynamics. The JavaScript code can interact with the DOM (Document Object Model) through the various API (Application Programming Interface) libraries based on a mechanism of user- triggered events. Received 19 July 2010 Accepted 23 September 2010