How To Use HTML5 Today 155
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Dori Smith offers developers a hands-on guide to using HTML5 today. 'Many of the media reports about HTML5 have focused on the politics, the "not until 2022" sound bite, or on HTML5's prospects as a "Flash killer." The reality of HTML5 is simply that it's the long-needed and long-overdue update to HTML4 — and you can start to implement it today,' Smith writes. Video, semantic tags, smart form input validation — Smith steps through several HTML5 features that can already be implemented, while noting several other presentation features that will soon be on their way. Smith also discusses IE work-arounds, such as HTML 5 Shiv and Google Chrome Frame."
Dive into HTML5 (Score:5, Informative)
Is also a great resource. With less ads, things broken up by chapter, examples, how to detect if something is enabled, etc.
http://diveintohtml5.org/ [diveintohtml5.org]
Re:Is HTML 5 still structured as XML? (Score:5, Informative)
There is an XML syntax for HTML5 that you can optionally use.
Re:All well and good... (Score:4, Informative)
IE8 is a lot further along than IE7; and IE9, which should hit beta later this year, supports all HTML5 elements.
Re:All well and good... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Meanwhile, back at the ranch ... (Score:3, Informative)
You can include a tiny bit of javascript and have IE7+ (and 6 as well), "understand" all of the new elements. Google it.
Re:All well and good... (Score:2, Informative)
I have to ask what you mean by "minority". I hate IE as much as anyone, but the fact is, it is used by more people than all other browsers put together. I don't tailor my view of reality based on what I like, and you should get out of the habit.
Whoa - I went looking for a link to give my claims some weight - and I found this:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp [w3schools.com]
I guess if you are only measuring home users and technical users, you might get figures like that! But, when you include ALL COMPUTERS, you get quite different results.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0 [hitslink.com]
Re:Minor improvements (Score:5, Informative)
I have misgivings about HTML5. It gives the page more control, and the user less. That's been a trend in HTML for years, and it's getting worse.
I disagree. HTML5 gives the user more control. Right now we're hampered by proprietary plug-ins to provide functionality, like Silverlight and Flash. With HTML5 taking over those functions, the browser codes it, so you can choose which browser you want based upon how well it lets you control the elements on the page. It's basically moving parts of Web pages from single vendor closed implementations to open implementations that compete to serve you best.
Well, that and a lot more nice tags to break up pages into sections, add support for custom fonts, etc. But that doesn't mean the user loses control. These are markup languages meant to be interpreted. If you don't like custom fonts, noting stops a browser from offering an option of rendering the all as a font of your choosing in the color of your choosing, etc.
We're going to need a browser option for "don't run canvas code for windows that aren't on top.
And we can add it. Moreover, we can add a lot more finely grained controls than that, since it is now specified in the canvas element instead of a Flash movie. It's no longer just "run" or "don't run". It can be "run but never let the sound get above this volume, confine it to the page, and modify the way it runs so it never overlaps any text". Hell, we could add the option of making canvas elements that overlap other elements 90% transparent by default and always having a close and display button.
They should have provided for either regular expressions...
They did. It's even demonstrated in the article.
Re:Minor improvements (Score:3, Informative)
The "input type" [w3.org] mechanism for forms is lame. There are a number of standard types like "tel", but it's just text with no line breaks. They should have provided for either regular expressions or syntax like the COBOL Picture clause ("CREDIT_CARD_NUMBER PIC 9999-9999-9999-9999").
If you had RTFA you would have seen that one of the new validation types IS regex in the HTML 5 draft.
<input type="text" pattern="REGEX HERE">
Re:All well and good... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Multi-column! Multi-column!! (Score:3, Informative)
Have you actually tried reading multi-column pages on the web? It is a pain in the ass. Instead of just scrolling down as you read, you scroll down to the bottom of the first column, then scroll back up to the top, then scroll down again to read the next column, etc. It is pointless, and offers zero advantages to the reader. The only people clamoring for it seem to be layout artists raised on print layout; I can't think of a single case as a reader where I would prefer multi-column over single-column layout for an article. Yes, there may be a usability limit to column width - but on the web there is no limit to the vertical dimension, so this really doesn't matter.
The one place multiple columns in an electronic medium makes sense is where you can fit everything on a single page by doing so, and in order to be readable that means knowing the size of the screen your readers will be using - if you can't guarantee that, just use a single column. Pretty much everyone is used to scrolling down as they read, it is quite easy and seamless.
Multi-column has nothing to do with page width - yes, there will be significant space "wasted" in a single-column layout, but so what? It is much better than the alternative of having to scroll up and down as you read.
Re:heh (Score:5, Informative)
Pardon the interruption, and sorry I'm a little late to the party, but I wish they would link the quick loading single page version [infoworld.com] of TFA rather than five ad-laden three paragraph apiece pages.
I avoid infoworld and many other such sites because of this cluelessness. Annoying your readers is a grat way to keep them from coming back. This is the first infoworld article I've read in quite some time; now I remember why I quit going there.
Re:Meanwhile, back at the ranch ... (Score:3, Informative)
> How hard is it to decide on a new standard?
Generally, not much harder than writing any piece of technical writing of the same length which has multiple authors with different (and generally conflicting) agendas. The time will also depend on the desired quality of the standard, of course. Writing a standard that says "do something here" or "behavior is not defined" takes less effort than one that carefully describes what a conforming implementation is supposed to do.
The length in this case is order of 1000 pages, last I checked. The desired quality is high (in that "behavior is not defined" stuff is being avoided). The number of authors depends on how you count them, ranging from a minimum of 1 to a maximum of several thousand depending on whom you ask. Realistically, there are at least 5 separate organizations (each with internal politics!) that have veto power over things they don't like, plus the editor, the three working group chairs (one of whom belongs to none of the above 5 organizations), and various invited experts, etc.
That's not even counting the bikeshedding that goes on.
Typical mail volume on the mailing list is around 900 messages a month or so, from a quick look at the archives (conveniently available at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/ [w3.org] ). Another 400 messages a month or so on the whatwg list (archives at http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/ [whatwg.org] ).
I'm assuming you've either never been involved in a standardization effort of any kind or got very very lucky when you were involved and dealt with something small and uncontroversial.