Google gears up for HTML 5

Speaking at the Google IO developer conference keynote Google’s Vic Gundotra, vice president of developer products, showed off new features such as support for geolocation services and a new way of adding applications to web pages.

Chief among these is a tool called Google Web elements, which allows developers to drop in Google applications directly on to pages with just a few lines of code.

The company also said that it had now released full support for Java within its App Engine and said it had 10,000 applications using Java ready to go.

"Bet on the web," said Gundotra.

"Its rate of innovation has dramatically accelerated over the past 12 months, giving rise to an open web platform that's fundamentally more capable and more sophisticated than even a year ago.”

“The combination of HTML 5, a vibrant developer community, and the pervasiveness of modern web browsers is delivering a programming model and an end-user experience that will surprise and delight people."

HTML 5, the draft of which was published by the HTML Working Group on April 23, offered a way to free developers from writing applications for specific operating systems by letting them write for open browser standards instead. Nearly half a billion people now use open source browsers he said.

He was joined on stage by Jake Sullivan, Mozilla’s vice president. Sullivan confirmed that all HTML 5 features would be incorporated in the forthcoming Firefox 3.5 browser.

“Browser competition is heating up and that’s very important,” Sullivan said

“We’ve seen what happens when there’s no competition; things stagnate. We proved that you can compete even without installing browsers on systems.”

That last comment cause some amusement to the audience. Microsoft has committed to HTML 5 but will not say when it plans to develop Internet Explorer to support it.

“Microsoft’s commitment to HTML 5 is something I’m happy to see,” said Gundotra.

“We eagerly await to see any evidence of it.”