Setting new standards (Image: Spencer Platt/Getty)
Innovation is our regular column that highlights emerging technological ideas and where they may lead
How would you like to have just one all-powerful program on your computer? No cluttered “start” menu or “dock” to make your selection from, just one icon to click that opens up a window capable of any task you may require.
In fact, you are already using that one all-powerful program: it’s your web browser.
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A new version of the standard HyperText Markup Language (HTML) used to make web pages is in the works. The new standard, called HTML5, is not yet complete, but its impressive features and the fact it has attracted the backing of major computer manufacturers and web-content producers has set it on course to dramatically change the way we use computers.
Wider web
HTML5’s power is that it can break down the barrier between applications running online and those on your own device almost completely.
Advanced web services like like or the online version of already make it possible to edit photos or spreadsheets much as you can with a traditional program. But those web applications don’t feel quite right, because the current form of HTML ring-fences the web from the rest of a computer.
Web apps can’t do things like drag-and-drop files between your web browser and computer desktop, offer full functionality when you’re not online, or play various media without extra software plug-ins. HTML5 makes it possible to do all that, making it a technology with appeal to both web users and the companies and programmers that provide web services.
iPad pronouncement
In the past week Google used HTML5 to make it possible to as you would if moving them around on your own computer, and also announced that it would soon use HTML5 to make it possible for online documents to be , by storing data locally and seamlessly syncing it as soon as when a connection is available.
Apple used the recent launch of its iPad to provide another major boost to the nascent standard, attracted by the way it can prevent a browser having to rely on third-party software like Adobe Flash or Microsoft Silverlight to display video or interactive media.
Apple made it clear that the iPad and the iPhone will never run Flash, the Adobe software used by an estimated 99Â per cent of internet connected machines to deliver video and other content.
Bold move
It was seen by many commentators as a move that would prevent buyers of the iPad from fully experiencing the web. But while turning its back on Flash, Apple is embracing HTML5. As a result are also embracing it. And why not – the new standard will make putting video, audio or into a webpage as simple as embedding images.
Despite six years in the making, HTML5 is still not fully baked. of web programmers, web enthusiasts and academics is still finalising its exact shape and wrestling with both the big questions like how to free the web of third-party plug-ins and thousands of minutiae, ranging from how windows open to how links are displayed.
Major debates about its final form are still raging, such as , but every day brings us closer to the day when we need only open one program to do anything we want.
Read previous Innovation columns: Robots look to the cloud for enlightenment, iPad is child’s play but not quite magical, Only mind games will make us save power, Gaze trackers eye computer gamers, Market research wants to open your skull, Sending botnets the way of smallpox, Bloom didn’t start a fuel-cell revolution, Who wants ultra-fast broadband?, We can’t look after our data – what can?
![Astronomers have long known that understanding how star clusters come to be is key to unlocking other secrets of galactic evolution. Stars form in clusters, created when clouds of gas collapse under gravity. As more and more stars are born in a collapsing cloud, strong stellar winds, harsh ultraviolet radiation and the supernova explosions of massive stars eventually disperse the cloud, and their light can bear down on other star-forming regions in the galaxy. This process is called stellar feedback, and it means that most of the gas in a galaxy never gets used for star formation. Researching how star clusters develop can answer questions about star formation at a galactic scale. Now, the state of the art has been further developed with both Hubble and Webb working together to provide a broad-spectrum view of thousands of young star clusters. An international team of astronomers has pored over images of four nearby galaxies from the FEAST observing programme (#1783), trying to solve this mystery. Their results show that it is the most massive star clusters that clear away their gaseous shroud the fastest, and begin lighting their galaxy the earliest. The team identified nearly 9000 star clusters in the four galaxies in different evolutionary stages: young clusters just starting to emerge from their natal clouds of gas, clusters that had partially dispersed the gas (both from Webb images), and fully unobstructed clusters visible in optical light (found in Hubble images). With Webb???s ability to peer inside the gas clouds, they were able to then estimate the mass and age of each cluster from its light spectrum. This image shows a section of one of the spiral arms of Messier 51 (M51), one of the four galaxies studied in this work, as seen by Webb???s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). The thick clumps of star-forming gas are shown here in red and orange, representing infrared light emitted by ionised gas, dust grains, and complex molecules such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Within these gas complexes, each tens or hundreds of light years across, Webb reveals the dense, extremely bright clusters of massive stars that have just recently formed. The countless stars strewn across the arm of the galaxy, many of which would be invisible to our eyes behind layers of dust, are also laid bare in infrared light. [Image description: A large, long portion of one of the spiral arms in galaxy M51. Red-orange, clumpy filaments of gas and dust that stretch in a chain from left to right comprise the arm. Shining cyan bubbles light up parts of the gas clouds from within, and gaps expose bright star clusters in these bubbles as glowing white dots. The whole image is dotted with small stars. A faint blue glow around the arm colours the otherwise dark background.]](https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/13114322/SEI_296271016.jpg)
