W3C has unveiled it's new HTML 5 logo. They have also released a new Badge Builder application which allows you to customise the logo for use on your own website. So if you start seeing what looks like alien writing appearing on the side of websites, like the one I have generated opposite, don't start calling the MIB's, its just the W3C badge. The one that I've created includes all the optional elements of HTML 5. At the minute you have to manually generate this logo, however, I would not be surprised if one of the major search engines offer a simple javascript include for your website that uses data from it's own search index and auto generates the logo based on what HTML 5 elements it has detected (* hint hint Google, or Bing *).

The individual symbols on the badge indicates whether the site uses offline storage (using the LocalStorage facility in HTML 5), multimedia (using video tags for example) or dynamic graphics using the Canvas element or any one of several other HTML 5 features. There are a couple of problems with the badge though. First is, this badge includes CSS3 as part of it's make up. CSS3 is not part of the html 5 specification, but an entirely separate set of standards.

Another problem is that the multimedia support will vary between browsers, look at the current debate regarding H.264 support for Chrome.

I rather like the badge, but I suspect that it will only ever be used on websites that appeal to website designers. For the rest of hte population, having this alien writing on the page will make no sense at all, and might even alienate some people from certain demographics.