HTML5 may still be a long way off, but did you know that quite a few powerful features are available in the current crop of web browsers? In fact, five key features are available in the latest versions of popular browsers from Firefox, Opera, Safari, and of course Google Chrome.

The following 5 features can be used across the above browsers so why not have a play and see what you can come up with while we await HTML5’s official release, and let’s face it, we have quite some time to kill. The big 5 are:

• Canvas – This element provides a simple but powerful mechanism for drawing graphics on a web page using JavaScript. To see the real power of the Canvas element, why not check out Mozilla’s BeSpin Interface. It’s very hard to believe that this only uses HTML5 and JavaScript!
• Video – Finally, we have an easy and logical way to embed video on a web page, very much like we embed images today. No plug-ins or codec’s needed.
• Geolocation API – Display maps quickly and easily. Check out this HTML5 Geolocation Example.
• AppCache and Database – These both make it easy to build offline apps. Google are taking full advantage of these features with their offline Gmail on Android phones.
• Web Workers – A mechanism for spinning off background threads to do processing that would normally cause browser speed problems.

So as you can see, there are some elements of HTML5 that you can get to grips with right now! Wicked!