The draft recommendation of HTML has a simplified DOCTYPE. In HTML 4.01, you had to start your pages something quite like this:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
In HTML5, the DOCTYPE will be simplified to this:
<!doctype html>
...and to get a full valid HTML5 document, you just need that doctype at the start, plus a <meta> charset in the beginning of the head, leaving your basic HTML5 document to read like this:
<!doctype html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Example Title</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Example paragraph</p>
</body>
</html>
Notice that the <body> is blank... no background image, no link colors, no margins. In HTML5, you're required to place the styling for the document in the CSS file. Trying to hardcode styles into the page will result in validation errors.
Some other features of HTML5 are special navigations sections and footer sections, allowing for much easier access of your web site to visitors with alternate viewing styles (screen reader or braille reader, etc.)
As with the rest of this site, please remember that HTML5 is not finalized, therefore, the information contained in these links is subject to change prior to the official release of HTML5.
These tutorials require basic HTML and CSS knowledge.
