Any HTML5 fan?

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1

Hey guys. I wanted to know how effective is HTML 5 for designing new websites. And how is it different from the old version? What are the new features?

2

HTML5 adds some new features to HTML that may or may not be good ones, depending on your perspective. It’s still in development, though, so its use is a bit premature right now … often needing JavaScript to make it work. As for its features, you really should do some research. There are lots of sites that detail what’s new in HTML5.

3

HTML 5 currently proposes adding a number of useful additions as well as a few things that make no sense. Hopefully the things that make no sense will be removed before it becomes a standard.

A few examples of some of what makes no sense.

  1. Addition of the <embed> tag - only required to support Netscape 4 as all browsers more recent than that support the <object> tag which is the HTML 4 standard way to embed objects. It seems a bit late to be considering adding something only needed to support a long dead browser. (embed was a proprietary Netscape tag that some other browsers support)

  2. Addition of the <iframe> tag to cater for the fact that IE6 doesn’t allow you to turn off the borders when you use the standard <object> tag for the purpose. Again a bit late considering that IE6 should also be dead by the time HTML 5 becomes a standard. (iframe was an IE proprietary tag that most other browsers also support - HTML 4 flagged it as obsolete even though it was never part of the prior standard).

  3. Addition of the “required” attribute to input fields. Since HTML 5 is also adding a “pattern” attribute and since the pattern can easily specify whether the field is required or not the pattern attribute makes the required attribute obsolete. With both there you can spcify that a field is mandatory and must be empty both at the same time.

4

I’m working on making what I call HTML 5 hybrid sites. It is a hybrid since the standard isn’t official and browser support is all over the place depending on what new HTML 5 item you are using. Case in point, Android’s support of HTML 5 forums is one step up above non-existent.

Reference

5

That’s why there are various JS polyfills. I don’t know why people are bothering with this, but I guess it’s worth being aware of, anyhow.