

Ask HN: HTML 4.01 or HTML5? - Devlin_Donnelly

A friend recently told me that he was interested in getting involved in the technology field, specifically Web Design/Development.<p>So I thought this would be a great opportunity for me to write a series of thorough tutorials on the basic web technologies for developers, beginning with HTML. After all as a wise man once said, to truly learn, one must teach. ;-)<p>The question I am asking myself is with HTML 4.01 still the officially released HTML standard, yet with HTML5 an emerging technology how should the novice web designer be taught HTML? Should they be taught the HTML 4.01 way and HTML5 be treated as a separate topic to be learned later? Should they be taught both at the same time seeing as both are present on the web at this time?<p>Or is it right to skip the old way and teach new students the HTML5 way, in order that they have a simpler introduction which best prepares them for the future?<p>Any thoughts/comments/suggestions would be appreciated.<p>Also relevant to this discussion would be a cross-section of data showing browser usage statistics along with the HTML5 feature support of those browsers, so we can look at the percentage of web users that already have support for basic HTML5 features.<p>If this number seems sufficient - it will only increase over time - we might not consider it to be that important for a new student of HTML to learn the old way. Any pointers to where such data can be found to asses these statistics would be appreciated as well.
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clockwork_189
Learn HTML 4. Build some applications with it and then learn HTML5. It isnt a
big learning curve but the most important part is to actually play around and
TRULY understand how HTML4 works. Then when you get to HTML5 you will learn
what changed and you will understand why. HTML 5 is still unofficial. If I
recall correctly, it is officially out in 2014. But you can still use the
HTML5 doctype and other features in your projects, they just wont be
compatible across different browsers.

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Robby2012
Actually HTML5 doesn't have almost anything to do with HTML4. You should start
teaching HTML and CSS and when the base is built jump to javascript (HTML5)

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benaiah
Go with HTML5. It _is_ the current standard, and is the way forward. It's
widely supported.

Really, for just learning HTML, you shouldn't be dealing with the kind of
specialized stuff that HTML5 addressed, other than its semantic elements.
KISS.

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steventruong
HTML 4.01, then HTML5. Do both. It's good to know and helpful in the
transition.

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mandariini
xhtml and html5 after that

