New Features for Web App Developers

With HTML 5’s emphasis on web application development, there’s plenty of new features for developers to use, some of which we can use today:

• A 2D drawing API for scripting graphics using the new canvas element, which is supported in all the major browsers except for Internet Explorer.
• registerProtocolHandler and registerContentHandler, which allow web applications to register for certain protocols or MIME types. Both are available in Firefox.
• A manifest caching mechanism to support offline web applications, available in Firefox and Safari.
• Video and audio APIs. The majority of the API works in Firefox, Opera (experimental build), and Safari—although Safari only uses Apple’s proprietary .mov format, rather than the open-source Ogg formats supported by Firefox and Opera.
• window.postMessage: cross-document messaging implemented in all major browsers.
• history.pushState to enable better back-button support in Ajax apps. (No implementations yet, but window.onhashchange is supported in IE8.)
• A drag and drop API with a draggable attribute, supported in Firefox 3.5.
• An editing API that hooks into the contenteditable attribute allowed on any element, already in all major browsers.
• Client-side persistent storage using key/value pairs and support for embedded SQL databases: key/value pairs are in Firefox, Safari, and IE8, while SQL is supported only in Safari at this point.

For more read the full SitePoint article