Apple.com is now taking advantage of HTML 5 in various WebKit-based browsers! This is fantastic news for the proliferation of HTML 5 – the replacement for HTML 4.01. I will shy away from jumping into all of the differences between HTML 4.01/DOM/XHTML and HTML 5 but the main difference, on the surface, is the multimedia capabilities of HTML 5 – most notably video. Rather than using browser plug-ins, such as Flash, to render video the browser itself will be responsible for the rendering and controls. Not only does this provide a performance increase, it also allows objects to be layered and presented in a much cleaner manner.

Geek Technica recently posted a great article, complete with the relevant screenshots, discussing Apple’s recent decision to take advantage of HTML 5 on capable browsers. I gave the videos a shot with both Firefox and Safari, and now I am even more excited for HTML 5. Exciting times are ahead!