Forms haven't really changed in functionality since they were first invented, but with HTML5 the browser is going to add a lot of the functionality you've previously been hand coding through JavaScript/jQuery.

HTML5 now supports things like setting a field to be required or adding some html text that disappears when you click in the field. Some of the new tags include:

• required - Determines if the field must be filled in
• placeholder - Text to be displayed before the user enters a value
• autofocus - Default the curser to the field with this set
• pattern - A regex expression to validate the field
• min / max - Specify the min and max values that can be entered

For more visit the HTML5 form attributes page on W3Schools

There are also new input types that will restrict the data that can be entered and the way the field is rendered such as:

• colour
• date
• datetime
• email
• month
• number
• range
• search
• tel
• time
• url
• week

For more view is the HTML5 form input types page on W3Schools

Before HTML5 the HTML for your page's layout was probably primarily made up of a lot of div tags with id's a class's to give them a visual structure and layout. It might look something like this...

This though has 2 problems. Firstly it's not great for computers like search engines or screen readers to understand as everything is a div. There is extra code you can add to improve on this (have a look at Scheme.org). Secondly your code isn't very, again because everything is a div.

HTML5 however introduces new semantic tags like <header>and
<footer> to make your data more structured. So the above example would become...

Other tags are as follows:

Tag Description

<article> For external content, like text from a news-article, blog, forum, or any other content from an external source

<aside> For content aside from the content it is placed in. The aside content should be related to the surrounding content

<details> For describing details about a document, or parts of a document

<summary> A caption, or summary, inside the details element

<figure> For grouping a section of stand-alone content, could be a video

<figcaption> The caption of the figure section

<footer> For a footer of a document or section, could include the name of the author, the date of the document, contact information, or copyright information

<header> For an introduction of a document or section, could include navigation

<hgroup> For a section of headings, using

<h1> to <h6>, where the largest is the main heading of the section, and the others are sub-headings

<mark> For text that should be highlighted

<meter> For a measurement, used only if the maximum and minimum values are known

<nav> For a section of navigation

<progress> The state of a work in progress

<section> For a section in a document. Such as chapters, headers, footers, or any other sections of the document

<time> For defining a time or a date, or both