Facebook: here's how we're using HTML5 now: Places, video and more

The giant social network is moving ahead in its adoption of the emerging web standard, as it explainsFacebook and HTML5, sitting in a tree, p-a-r-s-i-n-g. Facebook's engineering team (the people who in The Social Network are only seen "wired in" - wearing headphones while they code as though their lives depended on it) have sung a paean to HTML5 in their latest blogpost.As they point out, "It's worth understanding that the term 'HTML5' has come to mean more than just the single HTML5 specification, but really represents the next evolution of the web platform and thus dozens of related specifications. Many of them have already been implemented across recent versions of Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera."So rather like them, we'll use it interchangeably to include CSS3/Javascript as well.And what does Facebook like about HTML5? Where is it using it? ? for an HTML5 video player to serve iPad and iOS users. (This was the work of a "summer intern", apparently.)? in Facebook Places, for the iPhone/Android/other location-aware mobile device with a HTML5-capable browser that can use the Geolocation API, which sets out a standard interface for location data.? using the HTML5 History API so it can selectively load content via Ajax [asynchronous Javascript] while also having human-readable URLs: "Previously, current application state was stored in the URL fragment which resulted in unseemly URLs like 'profile.php?id=1586010043#!/pages/Haskell/401573824771'. Now, because HTML5 allows us to decouple the currently displayed URL from the actual state of the application, we're able to display pages more quickly, save bandwidth, and avoid polluting users' location bars."One thought about the History API: it surely should have some sort of signing, because a cursory glance makes it look like it could be used to mess with your browser's behaviour in all sorts of malicious ways. Wrong? Right? Surely the W3C have thought about possible malicious use?? Web Storage: "to cache typeaheads and give us more control over how we cache CSS and JavaScript. While we're not using it in production today, we're extremely excited about how it can be used in lower bandwidth environments such as mobile."? Web Sockets for chat: this opens a two-way (possibly secure) port between client and server, which "will hopefully replace long polling" - which seems to be a variant of push (but why Web Sockets is better than long polling isn't immediately obvious; feel free to impart an explanation in the comments).And if you need a reminder of how things stand in terms of browsers, head over to the HTML5 Readiness pages to see where they all stand (though you'll need an HTML5-capable browser to get anything like the best out of it.If anyone knows of a mobile equivalent of HTML5 Readiness, we'd love to know too - again, tell us in the comments.FacebookHTML5InternetCharles Arthurguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

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