html 5

#1

I have software in alpha delivery that, sadly but on purpose, runs in
browsers in quirks mode. I have written only one html 5 page just to
see that it works in IE (with adjustments, of course), so the basis
for my thinking on html 5 is primarily from reading. It looks to me
like there is no reason for us to move from quirks to an html 4.01 or
xhtml 1.0 doctype. It looks like it makes sense to head right for the

<!DOCTYPE html>

just as google.com has done.

Does anyone have experience with html 5? Other than the new simple
tags like <header> and <footer>, I do not have an immediate need for
some of the things, such as <video> that will not work in IE 8 (and
apparently not in IE 9 on anything short of Win 7, or am I wrong on
that?)

I know that it is not yet a w3c recommendation, but it could be years
before all of the players permit it to get such a blessing. At this
point Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera all support html 5 and IE 9
apparently does too (is anyone field testing that?)

Any ideas what we might encounter that would make us sorry we took the
html 5 route this early?

Thanks. --dawn

#2

On 2010-08-30 20:20:50 -0400, dawn <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> said:

Quote:

Any ideas what we might encounter that would make us sorry we took the
html 5 route this early?

Really? You're asking this here?

--
Kevin Powick

#3

On Aug 30, 8:02*pm, Kevin Powick <nos... (AT) spamless (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

On 2010-08-30 20:20:50 -0400, dawn <dawnwolth... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> said:

Any ideas what we might encounter that would make us sorry we took the
html 5 route this early?

Really? *You're asking this here?

Yes, there is a difference between answers you get from people you
"know" than from those you don't. If Ross or someone from DesignBAIS
or Tony or ... answer this, I have a clue what they are doing and what
their angle is. In spite of this not always being a delightful
community (I suspected when I saw you had responded that your response
would not be a helpful one, for example), it is still community. I was
happy to see that Chandru, Tony, Jeff and others had all participated
recently, so I decided to take the risk.

By the way, along with an xml spec, the language we are using to
generate the html documents on the server-side is mvbasic, so this
might not be straight down the middle of cdp, but there have surely
been topics of less relevance. Have a good day, Kevin. cheers! --
dawn

Quote:

--
Kevin Powick

#4

On Aug 31, 2:20*am, dawn <dawnwolth... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

I have software in alpha delivery that, sadly but on purpose, runs in
browsers in quirks mode. I have written only one html 5 page just to
see that it works in IE (with adjustments, of course), so the basis
for my thinking on html 5 is primarily from reading. It looks to me
like there is no reason for us to move from quirks to an html 4.01 or
xhtml 1.0 doctype. It looks like it makes sense to head right for the

!DOCTYPE html

just as google.com has done.

Does anyone have experience with html 5? Other than the new simple
tags like <header> and <footer>, I do not have an immediate need for
some of the things, such as <video> that will not work in IE 8 (and
apparently not in IE 9 on anything short of Win 7, or am I wrong on
that?)

I know that it is not yet a w3c recommendation, but it could be years
before all of the players permit it to get such a blessing. At this
point Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera all support html 5 and IE 9
apparently does too (is anyone field testing that?)

Any ideas what we might encounter that would make us sorry we took the
html 5 route this early?

Thanks. *--dawn

Dawn,

I've just finished reading HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith and
I can't claim any more knowledge than you but it seems to me that
HTML5 is the way to go for new projects. The book has tips and .js
examples of how to detect that the browser doesn't support features
like 'autocomplete' or 'datalist' so carefully crafted code will run
in any browser today and will immediately be ready when the browser
catches up. Dive into HTML5 is another good place to look.

For me, the enhanced form/client side validation capabilities are
really interesting although CSS needs to catch up. The same publishers
(A Book Apart) have a CSS3 book coming in the autumn/fall so
presumably there is progress on that front too.

Sorry this is not the view from a practitioner you were hoping for
but, like you, I am interested to see if anyone else in here has
anything to add...

Ian

#5

On 2010-08-31 08:26:01 -0400, dawn <dawnwolthuis (AT) gmail (DOT) com> said:

Quote:

In spite of this not always being a delightful
community (I suspected when I saw you had responded that your response
would not be a helpful one, for example),

Just trying to remain consistent, Dawn.

Quote:

By the way, along with an xml spec, the language we are using to
generate the html documents on the server-side is mvbasic

Cool. Are you storing your image files as blobs in the MV database too?

Quote:

so this
might not be straight down the middle of cdp, but there have surely
been topics of less relevance.

Zoooom. My quip wasn't about topic relevance.

--
Kevin Powick

#6

Have you looked at jQuery for client side stuff? There are lots of
plugins that do some neat things and really help reduce gadget dev
time. We're using jQuery at managable levels on our e-commerce site
and it has proven to be a great asset for web dev. Good luck with
HTML5. XHTML 1.x still isn't fully supported due to varying decisions
on part of browser devs, but you can get validated in all of the
current browsers if you don't go too exotic with the design. (Hasn't
that been the case since HTML was adopted??) And CSS? I doubt CSS will
ever be fully adopted and properly implemented by all of the browsers.
They all may say "full support for CSS1/CSS2", but actual rendering
functionality is a totally different story. Also, as soon as one
version is almost clean in 99% of the browsers, a newer version comes
out and rewrites the rule book.

If you are building an end-user app, and not a public app, then pick
a browser and build your app based on the strengths of it. If you run
into a limitation that is a show-stopper, check out other browsers and
be prepared to move and possibly recode. There aren't tons of
limitations, that I've run into, when using jQuery and AJAX with
controlled CSS. Then again, I've not written full application suites
with it. The fact is, every browser is at war with another browser for
market share. They will never be 100% identical and offer the same
identical extended features. You can limit yourself to the W3C
standards, but even then "standards" are pretty loosely interpreted.

Glen

On Aug 31, 10:49*am, ianp <ianp0... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

On Aug 31, 2:20*am, dawn <dawnwolth... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

I have software in alpha delivery that, sadly but on purpose, runs in
browsers in quirks mode. I have written only one html 5 page just to
see that it works in IE (with adjustments, of course), so the basis
for my thinking on html 5 is primarily from reading. It looks to me
like there is no reason for us to move from quirks to an html 4.01 or
xhtml 1.0 doctype. It looks like it makes sense to head right for the

!DOCTYPE html

just as google.com has done.

Does anyone have experience with html 5? Other than the new simple
tags like <header> and <footer>, I do not have an immediate need for
some of the things, such as <video> that will not work in IE 8 (and
apparently not in IE 9 on anything short of Win 7, or am I wrong on
that?)

I know that it is not yet a w3c recommendation, but it could be years
before all of the players permit it to get such a blessing. At this
point Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera all support html 5 and IE 9
apparently does too (is anyone field testing that?)

Any ideas what we might encounter that would make us sorry we took the
html 5 route this early?

Thanks. *--dawn

Dawn,

I've just finished reading HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith and
I can't claim any more knowledge than you but it seems to me that
HTML5 is the way to go for new projects. The book has tips and .js
examples of how to detect that the browser doesn't support features
like 'autocomplete' or 'datalist' so carefully crafted code will run
in any browser today and will immediately be ready when the browser
catches up. Dive into HTML5 is another good place to look.

For me, the enhanced form/client side validation capabilities are
really interesting although CSS needs to catch up. The same publishers
(A Book Apart) have a CSS3 book coming in the autumn/fall so
presumably there is progress on that front too.

Sorry this is not the view from a practitioner you were hoping for
but, like you, I am interested to see if anyone else in here has
anything to add...

Ian- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

#7

On Aug 31, 9:49*am, ianp <ianp0... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

On Aug 31, 2:20*am, dawn <dawnwolth... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

I have software in alpha delivery that, sadly but on purpose, runs in
browsers in quirks mode. I have written only one html 5 page just to
see that it works in IE (with adjustments, of course), so the basis
for my thinking on html 5 is primarily from reading. It looks to me
like there is no reason for us to move from quirks to an html 4.01 or
xhtml 1.0 doctype. It looks like it makes sense to head right for the

!DOCTYPE html

just as google.com has done.

Does anyone have experience with html 5? Other than the new simple
tags like <header> and <footer>, I do not have an immediate need for
some of the things, such as <video> that will not work in IE 8 (and
apparently not in IE 9 on anything short of Win 7, or am I wrong on
that?)

I know that it is not yet a w3c recommendation, but it could be years
before all of the players permit it to get such a blessing. At this
point Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera all support html 5 and IE 9
apparently does too (is anyone field testing that?)

Any ideas what we might encounter that would make us sorry we took the
html 5 route this early?

Thanks. *--dawn

Dawn,

I've just finished reading HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith and
I can't claim any more knowledge than you but it seems to me that
HTML5 is the way to go for new projects. The book has tips and .js
examples of how to detect that the browser doesn't support features
like 'autocomplete' or 'datalist' so carefully crafted code will run
in any browser today and will immediately be ready when the browser
catches up. Dive into HTML5 is another good place to look.

Yes, I picked up an HTML 5 book in the bookstore the other day and
skimmed it, figuring I would hold out for a used one on Amazon when
those show up, but it convinced me that was the way to go. Then I did
some web surfing to learn more. I had originally started by trying to
decide whether to go with an XHTML DTD or HTML 4.01, in preparation
for HTML 5. I decided on these pieces for a template for my students
to use (in a client-side web dev class, html, css, javascript). The
only thing I wouldn't do in a production page is point to the script
from another site. Once they are to the point of creating external js
files in the class, then we can change that.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>Very basic template for an html 5 page
</title>
<meta charset="UTF-8" />

</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>

Quote:

For me, the enhanced form/client side validation capabilities are
really interesting although CSS needs to catch up. The same publishers
(A Book Apart) have a CSS3 book coming in the autumn/fall so
presumably there is progress on that front too.

Yes. I think we can go with more of the html 5 features than going
whole hog with css3, but maybe I'm just conservative that way. I care
a lot about cross-browser support and have suffered too much pain in
getting even the smallest things to work in IE, FF, and Chrome.

Quote:

Sorry this is not the view from a practitioner you were hoping for

Hey, I'll take what I can get. It is good to hear from someone who has
been reading on the subject. thanks. --dawn

Quote:

but, like you, I am interested to see if anyone else in here has
anything to add...

Ian

#8

On Aug 31, 10:28*am, Kevin Powick <nos... (AT) spamless (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

On 2010-08-31 08:26:01 -0400, dawn <dawnwolth... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> said:

In spite of this not always being a delightful
community (I suspected when I saw you had responded that your response
would not be a helpful one, for example),

Just trying to remain consistent, Dawn.

"A foolish consistency..."

Quote:

By the way, along with an xml spec, the language we are using to
generate the html documents on the server-side is mvbasic

Cool. *Are you storing your image files as blobs in the MV database too?

Just text -- the path info for storing and retrieving the images. I
could store them in Cache', but I did some analysis and think I made a
good call on that one for us, for now at least. It works.

Quote:

so this
might not be straight down the middle of cdp, but there have surely
been topics of less relevance.

Zoooom. *My quip wasn't about topic relevance.

Yeah, I guessed that, but just in case...

By the way, if you are ever in the area (NW Iowa), stop in and say hi.
I'll even buy you a beverage. smiles. --dawn

Quote:

--
Kevin Powick

#9

On Aug 31, 10:49*am, GlenB <batch... (AT) bellsouth (DOT) net> wrote:

Quote:

* Have you looked at jQuery for client side stuff?

I have looked at jQuery. If we did not have a framework that has good
coverage of what we need, it might be worth us adding it in for the js
dom work we do. The Cache' Zen framework spares us some of that type
of work, however.

Quote:

There are lots of
plugins that do some neat things and really help reduce gadget dev
time. We're using jQuery at managable levels on our e-commerce site
and it has proven to be a great asset for web dev. Good luck with
HTML5. XHTML 1.x still isn't fully supported due to varying decisions
on part of browser devs,

Yes, it looked like html 5 might actually be easier to use than xhtml,
provided we didn't try to exploit too many new features.

Quote:

but you can get validated in all of the
current browsers if you don't go too exotic with the design. (Hasn't
that been the case since HTML was adopted??)

Yes. Even without heading into exotic territory it is just bloomin'
difficult to get stuff working in all browsers.

Quote:

And CSS? I doubt CSS will
ever be fully adopted and properly implemented by all of the browsers.
They all may say "full support for CSS1/CSS2", but actual rendering
functionality is a totally different story. Also, as soon as one
version is almost clean in 99% of the browsers, a newer version comes
out and rewrites the rule book.

No kidding. When you consider that we are writing source intended to
run as interpreted code in multiple run-time engines from competing
vendors, without any relationships with those vendors and new ones
coming out of the woodwork, plus no control on what releases or
patches have been applied to the run-time environment or operating
system of any user, it is truly amazing we get anything to work.

Quote:

* If you are building an end-user app, and not a public app, then pick
a browser and build your app based on the strengths of it. If you run
into a limitation that is a show-stopper, check out other browsers and
be prepared to move and possibly recode.

I'm writing a public application.

Quote:

There aren't tons of
limitations, that I've run into, when using jQuery and AJAX with
controlled CSS. Then again, I've not written full application suites
with it. The fact is, every browser is at war with another browser for
market share. They will never be 100% identical and offer the same
identical extended features. You can limit yourself to the W3C
standards, but even then "standards" are pretty loosely interpreted.

They definitely are and will continue to be, no doubt. Like many
others developing for the web, I would love to be able to ignore IE.
It looks like the major players except Microsoft are all supporting
html 5, for example (MS will with IE 9, as I understand it), but
obviously it is critical to support not just the w3c standards but
also IE.

--dawn

Quote:

Glen

On Aug 31, 10:49*am, ianp <ianp0... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

On Aug 31, 2:20*am, dawn <dawnwolth... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

I have software in alpha delivery that, sadly but on purpose, runs in
browsers in quirks mode. I have written only one html 5 page just to
see that it works in IE (with adjustments, of course), so the basis
for my thinking on html 5 is primarily from reading. It looks to me
like there is no reason for us to move from quirks to an html 4.01 or
xhtml 1.0 doctype. It looks like it makes sense to head right for the

!DOCTYPE html

just as google.com has done.

Does anyone have experience with html 5? Other than the new simple
tags like <header> and <footer>, I do not have an immediate need for
some of the things, such as <video> that will not work in IE 8 (and
apparently not in IE 9 on anything short of Win 7, or am I wrong on
that?)

I know that it is not yet a w3c recommendation, but it could be years
before all of the players permit it to get such a blessing. At this
point Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera all support html 5 and IE 9
apparently does too (is anyone field testing that?)

Any ideas what we might encounter that would make us sorry we took the
html 5 route this early?

Thanks. *--dawn

Dawn,

I've just finished reading HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith and
I can't claim any more knowledge than you but it seems to me that
HTML5 is the way to go for new projects. The book has tips and .js
examples of how to detect that the browser doesn't support features
like 'autocomplete' or 'datalist' so carefully crafted code will run
in any browser today and will immediately be ready when the browser
catches up. Dive into HTML5 is another good place to look.

For me, the enhanced form/client side validation capabilities are
really interesting although CSS needs to catch up. The same publishers
(A Book Apart) have a CSS3 book coming in the autumn/fall so
presumably there is progress on that front too.

Sorry this is not the view from a practitioner you were hoping for
but, like you, I am interested to see if anyone else in here has
anything to add...

Ian- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

#10

On Aug 31, 10:20*am, dawn <dawnwolth... (AT) gmail (DOT) com> wrote:

Quote:

I have software in alpha delivery that, sadly but on purpose, runs in
browsers in quirks mode. I have written only one html 5 page just to
see that it works in IE (with adjustments, of course), so the basis
for my thinking on html 5 is primarily from reading. It looks to me
like there is no reason for us to move from quirks to an html 4.01 or
xhtml 1.0 doctype. It looks like it makes sense to head right for the

!DOCTYPE html

just as google.com has done.

Does anyone have experience with html 5? Other than the new simple
tags like <header> and <footer>, I do not have an immediate need for
some of the things, such as <video> that will not work in IE 8 (and
apparently not in IE 9 on anything short of Win 7, or am I wrong on
that?)

I know that it is not yet a w3c recommendation, but it could be years
before all of the players permit it to get such a blessing. At this
point Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera all support html 5 and IE 9
apparently does too (is anyone field testing that?)

Any ideas what we might encounter that would make us sorry we took the
html 5 route this early?

Thanks. *--dawn

We have been playing with HTML 5 for a while for use with Visage, and
have also been playing (as best we can) with the IE9 Platform Preview
- certainly looking forward to faster jScript ... but as your probably
know, this is currently targeted specifically for W7, with no plans
for XP support. If you didn't know, you can also "cheat" with IE and
get it to "support" HTML 5 by installing Google Chrome Frame
http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe

From a Visage perspective, we will be leveraging some of the inbuilt
facilities HTML 5 has to offer, like the inbuilt media player, rather
than the activex we currently use when someone wants to embed video
into a page, and are reworking some of our "plumbing" where is makes
sense to do so. Our plan is to have Visage 8.0 released around the
same time that IE9 is officially released (should be before
Christmas ... originally I had thought around now, but instead we only
have 4th iteration of preview PUBLICLY available)

Because we do our own transformations of the XML descriptors we
generate to describe a page, and the actual HTML we spit out for
consumption in a browser, it becomes a (relatively) simple matter for
us to produce appropriate optimized code. It also helps that a lot of
the "Big News" surrounding HTML 5 has been getting kicked around &
discussed for years, so in most cases where we are looking at
replacing ActiveX controls, it is a no-brainer (and indeed we will be
keeping the ActiveX's alive for some time, just in case some of the
initial inbuilt implementations leave something to be desired)

In a large part, for us, when HTML 5 starts hitting the enterprise
browsers and is in wide use, it means that we will be able to remove
some of the "cheats" we have had in place ... fewer things we will
need to keep on developing and enhacing. BTW Dawn, we have supported
Video in Visage since IE5 .... and image capture since IE4!! I won't
mind if it takes people a while to support the latter .... would be
nice to keep some of our traditional "unique" features going for a
while longer