Opera's Molly Holzschlag on HTML5 and the future of web apps

Editor's note: Andrew Mager is reporting from the Future of Web Apps (FOWA 2010) conference, held in Miami from February 22 to 24. Click here to read all of his coverage.

Opera genius Molly Holzschlag spoke briefly about HTML5 at FOWA 2010 in Miami today, and I took some quick notes.

HTML5 is not a solution to adding more semantics, but to embrace what came before, and especially understand that the web is about building applications, not just sites.

People have a lot of questions about <canvas>, the drawing API for the web. We draw in Javascript. But canvas is controversial; there are accessibility concerns especially. Canvas can supercede these concerns if we can collectively code well. We can build "flashy" apps with HTML5 without worrying about Flash.

With the current proposals of HTML5, you can remove the need for Javascript in a lot of places like form validation. We are putting the stress on the browser.

HTML5 needs work though. The current spec is 900 pages when printed out.

One of the most fascinating things about HTML5 is offline web apps. The idea of using caching within the browser to hold all your information.

Native drag-and-drop, cross-document messaging, accesskeys, keygen elements, native JSON support, and geolocation built-in to the browser are some powerful features in the next version of HTML.