You hit the nail on the head. It's a balancing act based on time. While there are some nice bells and whistles with HTML5, it is not yet widely supported enough

You hit the nail on the head. It's a balancing act based on time. While there are some nice bells and whistles with HTML5, it is not yet widely supported enough to completely commit to the advancements that it brings to the table. While, we will be using HTML5 when launching our new site in the next few weeks, we will also be spending a bunch of time testing how the code degrades in the older browsers. For now, we patiently wait. And keep our fingers crossed for the ultimate demise of IE. In your situation, the benefit of improving the back end certainly outweighs the small payoff that HTML5 would bring to the front end. So yes, store it in the back of your head and revisit it soon.