Are you ready for HTML 5?
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| (HTML5) XX Hyper Text Markup Language 5 |
The WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) started developing HTML5 in June 2004. (Read how HTML5 got to that point at Dive into HTML5 by Mark Pilgrim.) By January 2008, a joint effort between the WHATWG and the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) resulted in the publication of the W3C Working Draft. The W3C Candidate Recommendation is due in 2012, with the W3C Recommendation due in 2022.
This would be the point where most people go: "Huh?"
Yes, 2022 is in the future...12 years in the future, to be exact. However, no one has to wait until the final recommendation to start using HTML5. In fact, Google has been using HTML5 for its search and mail application since mid-2009, and the Google PacMan page (created to celebrate PacMan's 30-year anniversary) was created with HTML5 elements. One thing to note, though, is that Google's pages are not valid HTML5.
So why would you want to start using HTML5 now? And what do you have to watch out for? The answers, as always, are "It depends."
Pros
I think the following features will help with HTML5's adoption rate.
New DOCTYPE - Over the years, I have only met a handful of people who have memorized one of the HTML or XHTML DOCTYPES. That's because they look like:
And:
The new HTML5 DOCTYPE is easy to type and easy to remember:
That's it. And adding it to an HTML file is all that's needed to make an HTML5 page.
Semantic areas - Some folks don't care about semantics in any version of HTML. (In this case, "semantics" means that the name of the area matches its purpose. For example, do you know when you should use the CSS class "BoldRed"? How about "warning"? What about a div called "left" as compared to a div called "content"?)
For those who care about semantics, HTML5 addresses them with areas called header, nav, article, section, aside, and footer--you still need CSS to position them, though. All browsers except IE recognize these new areas, and IE will recognize them if you use a script to define them. (Remy Sharp has defined a script for this purpose; read about it at HTML5 enabling script.)
Read more: Are you ready for HTML 5? - FierceContentManagement http://www.fiercecontentmanagement.com/story/are-you-ready-html-5/2010-05-25#ixzz0tsFoyy7i
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