One outstanding benefit of an offline website is that users can still access and use a previously visited web page without an active internet connection. This function among many others are made possible by hypertext markup language (HTML5) used to design websites.
While HTML5 comes with many similar features as its previous versions, there are several new features that separate this latest coding language from the rest. These new features make it easy to integrate graphical and multimedia content without using third party applications or flash. This article will disclose to you 8 outstanding benefits of HTML5 Offline websites.
1. Offline Catching Application
Have you ever opened your computer after visiting a website and tried to click the back or forward button, hoping to see your previous web page only to discover that you cannot view the page because you are not connected to the internet? The offline caching function offered by HTML5 will enable you to load certain sections of a previously visited web page without an active internet connection.
While building an offline website using HTML5, a web designer/ developer can specify the files that can be cached by the browser. Thus, even when you refresh your web page while offline it will still load appropriately. This technology has several benefits like offline browsing, reduced server load, and faster file loading.
2. Neater Code
HTML5 offline websites are easy to design because they come with a neater, cleaner and improved code. It is now easy to remove most div tags and replace them with the newer HTML5 elements. This feature also optimizes your offline website for improved search engine readability. The easier search engines are able to read and understand the content on your website, the higher your website’s search engine rankings.
3. Mutuality
To make their websites more interactive, web developers currently need to include captivating animations, play music, stream videos, and embed social networks like Twitter and Facebook into their websites. In later HTML offline website versions, web developers were forced to use third-party programs like QuickTime, Adobe Flash Player, and Silverlight to play video and audio. This method often resulted in errors and was quite messy.
HTML5 offline websites feature full support for audio and video. This feature makes it effortless to play audio and stream video on your website through any browser. Also, using HTML5 to design offline websites makes it possible to integrate charts, animations, high-quality drawings, and other interactive content materials without using third party programs or plugins because the embedding functionality is built into the browser.
4. Wide Browser Compatibility
HTML5 offline websites are highly compatible with major internet browsers like Opera, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome. Even though these browsers won’t support every new element in HTML5, they are able to read any website content at the very least.
5. Enhanced Semantics
With HTML5 offline websites, it is easy to see which parts of the web page are nav, headers, footers, aside, and much more because the tags come with a whole new format, specific purpose, and meaning. As a result, HTML5 offline websites have an improved semantic value as their codes are pretty standardized.
6. Geographical Location Support
HTML5 offline websites come with a Geolocation feature which enables webmasters and developers to find out the exact location of their website visitors. The HTML5 Geolocation APIs make location readily and easily available to any HTML5-compatible browser-based application.
7. Improved Website Response Time
While cookies have been used for years to track unique user data, they have several disadvantages including adding cookie data to every HTTP request. This flaw ends up reducing the response time of your website. Instead of using cookies, HTML5 offline websites use localStorage and sessionStorage. Even though these data storage methods are not permanent, they enable temporary storage of structured data without delaying your website’s response time.
8. Mobile Interface Optimization
HTML5 offline websites are optimized for use on different mobile devices and applications. HTML5 optimized mobile websites are responsive and easy to build across all mobile devices, for instance, smartphones and tablets. Mobile internet users can easily browse HTML5 offline websites without the need for horizontal scrolling as is the case with most online built websites. Wrapping it up…
Even though the use of offline HTML5 websites has not been fully adopted by many developers and designers, there are uncountable reasons for you to shift to an offline website. The use of HTML5 offline websites is the revolution that the world needed and the fact remains, it is the future of the internet whether you like it or not.
Using HTML5 to design an offline website is not only easy but also comes with a long list of advantages, some of which has been elaborated in this article.