Discuss: A Preview of HTML 5

by Lachlan Hunt

71 Too late

I suppose that HTML 5 will appear “a bit” too late. If it appeared now, situation would be different, but even if standard will be ready it will take years when users will use it.

posted at 10:46 am on December 7, 2007 by Marcin Nabiałek

72 Attributes without value..

.. look wrong, to me. Why did they choose to make that a standard?

The CONTROLS attribute describes nothing. Is it a boolean? Does it “control” something obscure? Simply adding a value would clear up a lot of potential confusion.

posted at 11:07 am on December 7, 2007 by M. Hageman

73 Controls Attribute

M. Hageman (comment 72), the controls attribute is boolean. It’s exactly like the checked attribute:

In XHTML, it would be controls=“controls”. For convenience, controls=”“ will work too.

posted at 05:01 pm on December 7, 2007 by Lachlan Hunt

74 Labels in Lists

When are they going to include a way to label a list?

<ul>
<label>Menu</label>
<li>Home</li>
<li>Contact Us</li>
<li>About</li>
</ul>

posted at 05:26 pm on December 7, 2007 by Daniel Avis

75 -

Generally those new elements suppose HTML 5 will make easier to developer/designer, though it wouldn’t much help. (Or i just didn’t realized of its shakes)

posted at 05:53 pm on December 7, 2007 by arman prawirasasra

76 Numbered headings

@ Stephen (comment 59)

My statement that, in HTML 5, lower value headings can be used before higher value headings, is correct. Below is an example taken from the spec:

http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#headings0

<body>

<h4>Apples</h4> Apples are fruit. <section> <h2>Taste</h2> They taste lovely. <h6>Sweet</h6> Red apples are sweeter than green ones. <h1>Color</h1> Apples come in various colors. </section>

</body>

Headings are one of the most important constructs in making Web pages accessible. But virtually nobody is using numbered headings correctly. Changing the semantics of numbered headings in HTML 5 will only serve to confuse people further and will not fix the problem. By contrast, XHTML 2 uses the h element instead of numbered headings, which is a much easier construct for people to understand and use. But the HTML 5 Working Group is reluctant to “borrow” constructs from XHTML 2.

posted at 03:04 am on December 10, 2007 by Vlad Alexander

77 TO ALA EDITORS

Please fix your commenting system. It’s not clear how to post code examples in comments. The preview does not reflect the actual posted comment.

posted at 03:09 am on December 10, 2007 by Vlad Alexander

78 Divided we Fall...

Hello – Interesting article and dicussion. I am a a college instructor for XHTML. It’s a sorry shame that the HTML 5 folks can’t get together with the XHTML 2 folks and just combine the best features of both. Then… let’s call it COOL 2.0. COOL? Yeah… because it would then be real Cool for students to learn just ONE language, and ONE standard that worked on ALL browsers. Fat chance. Instead, I’ll just tell them “Close your tags — No. Wait. Maybe you don’t have to.”

C’mon people. Doesn’t anyone see the “Tower of Babel” problem here? God help me, it almost makes me wish for a Dictatorship of web standards. An article comparing the competing standards, linked to and cited earlier, states:
“Indeed, the X/HTML 5 spec actually says ‘generally speaking, authors are discouraged from trying to use XML on the Web’, even though W3C continues to herald XML as the future of the Web?” HUH? Great, now we can have a new web editor with FIVE WINDOWS: HTML5, XHTML2, XML, CSS, and BROWSER VIEW. Wait… we’ll have to have a tab for different browser views for the different standards.

What the H—- is going on here? What the H—- should be taught in college so students can excel?

Yours – Scott

posted at 08:51 am on December 10, 2007 by Scott Frangos

79 HTML 5 is a waste of time

Talking about a technology that’s not expected to work until 2017 (or even as late as 2022) is ridiculous. The web moves far too quickly for us to rigidly define a language for use a decade in the future — the best we can do is embrace extensible technologies, so that things can develop naturally.

The new features HTML 5 are very underwhelming: for example, there’s the possibility for automatic client-side validation of e-mail addresses etc. — but that’s something I’d rather just do now with JavaScript than wait 10 years for some web browsers to do it for me. It’s laughable.

I’ve read that HTML 5 is supposed to be better for automatic indexing etc. — but if we’re concerned about making the web better for robots, then furthering XML is the way to go. And for developers, XHTML 2.0 is really clever, tight, elegant and intuitive. It’s not as backward compatible as HTML 5… but I’m beginning to think that maybe a ‘new start’ is what the web needs: we’ll see better levels of compliance after browser vendors are forced to start afresh. Anyway, it’s not as if you can’t adopt XHTML 2.0 without also serving old (X)HTML to old browsers until they die out. And, if XHTML 2.0 becomes a W3C recommendation soon (the XHTML2 Working Group Roadmap seems hopeful), it’s likely to have been well-supported for years by the time HTML 5 arrives to sort out little issues that only affect decade-old software.

posted at 06:26 am on December 12, 2007 by Callum Locke

80 I Agree With Comment 79

I have to say, I’ve only recently heard about HTML 5. I thought that as of HTML 4.01, HTML itself was no longer going to be developed or standardized, and that XHTML 1.0 and 2.0 were the way forward.

The biggest drawback for XHTML 2.0 as far as I can see is backward compatibility, but there’s nothing to say that browsers themselves cant process both current HTML/XHTML standards and that of XHTML 2.0. And if XHTML 2.0 solves many of the problems we see in HTML today, but 10 years sooner than HTML 5 will, then why even bother with HTML 5?

As people have repeatedly said in this discussion, 10 – 15 years is just too long to wait for a new markup language for the web.

My personal opinion is that the people developing HTML/XHTML in general aren’t thinking outside the box enough. At the moment, websites are primarily text-based, and everyone conforms to the usual standard when designing their sites – ie. most websites are columns-and-rows based layouts, filled with text. Search engines love text, but hate multimedia elements such as Flash and SVG graphics. But when are things going to change? When are we going to move away from the “anything-more-than-text-on-a-site-will-make-it-less-usable-for -someone” attitude?

I’m not saying that accessibility and usability aren’t important, and I know this is probably a discussion for another time, but it seems pointless to me that the W3C (and others) are working so hard (and for so long) on developing the next great standard markup language for the web, when in the end it just wont deliver what we’ll all want it to 10 – 15 years from now.

We need a completely new language for the web. Sure, it’d be fine to keep it XML-based (certainly not SGML-based) but if the web is going to evolve at the same pace that it has been, then we’re going to have to find a way of breaking the restrictions that current markup languages have – and in my eyes HTML 5 or XHTML 2.0 just aren’t going to do that.

posted at 05:53 pm on December 12, 2007 by Dominic Neagle