HTML 5.1 is now the latest Web standard

The World Wide Consortium (W3C) has released the official HTML 5.1 specification. The new release is the first minor revision of the fifth major version of the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) that is being widely used across Web apps.

“In this version, new features continue to be introduced to help Web application authors, new elements continue to be introduced based on research into prevailing authoring practices, and special attention continues to be given to define clear conformance criteria for user agents in an effort to improve interoperability,” the W3C team wrote in a blog post.

Unlike its previous version that debuted in 2014, HTML 5.1 is not a big release. However, it brings some new attributes and elements such as srcset, <picture>, <summary> and type=”context”.

The newest revision also comes with the requestAnimationFrame API to enhance Web animation effects.

Alongside the new additions, the upgraded HTML standard includes tweaks such as nested <header> and <footer> elements, and the optional url= attribute. The consortium has removed some old features, like media controllers and command API.

W3C plans to bring out the HTML 5.2 recommendation sometime in late 2017. In the meantime, developers can start testing the features of HTML 5.1.