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How To Use HTML5 Today
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."
But why do I have a sinking feeling that adoption of this new standard will be held back by Internet Explorer's atrocious handling of it?
I think between Google Chrome Frame and HTML 5 Shiv, MS will have a lot less power to hold back Web standards than they usually wield.
The problem isn't "deciding on a new standard"(though there certainly can be engineering challenges and whatnot), the problem is that the W3C doesn't have any power beyond a modicum of respect and whatever consensus it can hammer out.
They could pump out purely theoretical standards, either with no real implementations, or an alpha implementation stashed on somebody's git repo somewhere, all they like, as fast as their merry little legs could carry them; but that would be basically meaningless.
The delay comes out of the fact that, unless enough parties from the various browser makers can be convinced to care, the standard is dead on arrival. Politicking is slow.
Smith steps through several HTML5 features that can already be implemented, while noting several other presentation features that will soon be on their way.
So - I'm supposed to start implementing cutting edge changes for my production sites, when the browsers that support those changes are "soon to be released"?
Smith also discusses IE work-arounds, such as HTML 5 Shiv and Google Chrome Frame."
Soo... now I'm already having to code workarounds before the standard is even official? Again - thanks, no. I'll wait until it's ratified as a standard, and the first revision of major browsers offers compliance.
It's because page-width is variable that multi-columns are needed. There is a visual usability limit to column sizes, about 5-10 words or so.
It is a mistake to think that print properties do not apply to web. The same visual rules apply to web, or anywhere.
No, IE9 passes all of Microsoft's HTML5 tests.
Which is very different than supporting all HTML5 elements. (And even more different than meaningfully supporting all HTML5 elements.)
Huh? That would be a scrolling nightmare.
Sure enough, looking at the link provided, it's totally unreadable. The information on the page is out of context with the rest of the information on the page, the text providing context is off screen below. Instead of being able to quickly read or skim any of it, I gave up and closed the tab, returned here to report.
You might only have a hammer in your toolbox, and believe everything you see is a nail, but it's not. Newspapers needed the crutch of multiple columns because their format was hopelessly wide. Web pages have the opposite problem, they are infinitely tall. (One of the wonderful attributes of the Readability tool is to increase a web pages width to fill the screen.)
Worse, more web access is being done on mobile devices, thankfully that site was one column in Opera mini, I suppose we'll have to spoof to make it readable on other browsers?
It's not a mistake to think that print properties do not apply to the web, it's a mistake to misapply properties designed to overcome one liability, to media that has the opposite liability!
PS: Below you claim, "Multi-column can actually prevent scrolling entirely, by using the horizontal space instead of forcing you to scroll vertically." Seemingly to overlook the obvious extra white space required between multiple columns that isn't normally wasted--multiple columns add length.