HTML5 and The Future of the Web

[David]

With all the buzz about HTML 5, it's difficult to know where to look. But if you want to know what it is, how it differs from XHTML 1.0 and how it will affect YOU (and it will), check out this excellent article (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/16/html5-and-the-future-of-the-web/) from Smashing magazine.

[francis]

You should also keep an eye on Bruce Lawson's site (http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/) as he's doing an awful lot on HTML5. He's recently started working for Opera and has a long history of accessibility and web standards work.

PS - nice site redesign :)

Edit: you should also check out this Smashing Mag article on coding an HTML5 site from scratch (http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/08/04/designing-a-html-5-layout-from-scratch/). The joy for me is in CSS3. I'm working on a site that uses it to progressively enhance the presentation in modern browsers but still gives a presentable look in IE6, which I'm forced to support. I'm pretty happy with it but can't show it to you, unfortunately. Some of the things I've used are:

CSS3 rgba
CSS3 box shadows
CSS3 rounded corners
A grid system (http://www.thegridsystem.org/) (specifically this one (http://960.gs) as the download comes with lots of goodness)
Vertical rhythm (http://24ways.org/2006/compose-to-a-vertical-rhythm)

[David]

Thanks for the excellent links Francis.
Interesting to hear that you are using CSS3 and HTML5. It's a bit difficult to know what to make of it at the moment with all the buzz of XHTML2 being dropped. I suspect that things will quieten down and most will return to the security of XHTML1.0 for now. As some commentators are pointing out, it is likely going to be years before HTML5 can be used with any degree of certainty. CSS3, on the other hand may be closer and that is certainly worth experimenting with as the potential benefits are substantial - that's assuming those fun-lovin' folks over at W3C don't change their minds again.

[James]

For me, this remains aspirational until 90%+ of the general public have browsers that can support it. I agree that is several years away unfortunately.

These are improvements we have been crying out for but we have to wait for our audience's browsers to catch up.

It is not commercially viable to develop and test enhancement / degradation, just to please a minority, so my company remains with XHTML and CSS2 for the foreseeable future.

[David]

The HTML5 roadshow gains momentum as Microsoft joins the debate (http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-330109.html).

I think the one thing that can be said is that there is now more certainty about the future of web markup languages than there was a few months ago.