HTML 5 - when will it become standard, and what (if anything) should website designers be doing to prepare for it?

I very nearly de-railed a thread in the Website Reviews group when Dave Cooper posted up an excellent and thought-provoking post about learning HTML / XHTML / CSS in reply to a comment I made in there. Dave advised that "I wouldn't suggest anyone wastes time on XHTML now: development's been abandoned and HTML5 is going to be the next standard apparently, so you might as well use HTML4."

I was very interested and intrigued by Dave's comments, which prompted me to do a Google search for "HTML 5". I discovered some very interesting results, not least of all from W3C: http://www.w3schools.com/html5/html5_reference.asp .

I must admit that, to my embarrassment, I was only vaguely aware of HTML 5, and didn't realise that it was a potential successor not just to HTML 4, but to XHTML as well.

Rather than further de-rail Sheila's thread in Website Reviews, I thought I'd start this thread up to discuss HTML 5, it's potential impact on website design, when it's likely to come into force, and what (if anything) website designers should be doing to prepare for its arrival in terms of their own individual coding practices, etc. This is of particular interest to me, as I have only recently begun to expand my knowledge beyond "basic" HTML into the realms of XHTML and CSS, and so would very much like to know what impact HTML 5 could have in terms of where I should be focussing my attentions.

Many thanks once again to Dave for prompting me to research this, and I very much look forward to reading your replies! :)

Best wishes,

Chris

Tags: 5, coding, css, html, xhtml

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Harvey Raybould on January 19, 2010 at 2:06am

Hi Chris,

This is a difficult subject to be honest as I don’t think anyone really knows what is happening or when it is going to happen, or at least it seems that way to me. There are so many “ML’s” at the moment it is very confusing.

For any one that doesn’t know, I am going to try a brief description of each, however, I would not consider myself an expert in this subject, so please if anyone has a better knowledge, I would be extremely grateful for updates, inputs or corrections.

HTML - Hpertext Markup Language

This is the standard programming language that is used for creating web pages. The language is currently at version 4.

XML - Extensible Markup Language

XML is used to create and manage structured information, such as RSS feeds. It enables information to be easily shared across different computing systems.

XHTML - Extensible Hypertext Markup Language

This is a modification of HTML v4. HTML and XHTML are very similar, except for some slight differences which enable HTML to conform to the rules of XML.

For sure HTML v5 will be the next generation but when this is going to happen, as far as I am aware there is no official date, could be a month, year or longer. Interestingly I have also read that xhtml v2 is also being developed.

The subject of web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) and compatibility to the new languages, are any fully compatible with HTML v5 or XHTML v2, probably not, so I presume we are also going to see a new round of updated web browers.

If anyone has any comments or updates, I would be extremely interested to read them.

Thank you

Regards

Harvey

Permalink Reply by Gerald Hornsby on January 21, 2010 at 1:26am

With the growth of the 'higher level' web programming systems, will we need to know any of this stuff? These days, more and more of the 'nuts and bolts' of web programming is hidden beneath higher level functions.

It's like programming a PC in assembler. Great for fast, efficient code, but who does it nowadays? Speed of development, of both software and websites, is crucial, and everyone wants the 'bells and whistles' of their website working reliably.

Gerald

Permalink Reply by Chris Davis on January 21, 2010 at 1:48am

Hi Harvey and Gerald,

Many thanks for your interesting responses, and particular thanks to Harvey for such a detailed list - very good and informative reading! :)

I think what prompted me to ask about XHTML vs. HTML 5 is because of habits I've been developing whilst studying and learning about coding websites (note: all self-taught from books and tutorials), to make the coding XHTML compliant. For example, I've tried to develop the habit of coding "stand alone" elements with a trailing slash, such as < br / >, and < img src = "image.jpg" / > (without all the spacing within the elements - this board software won't let me display them without messing them up in some way!). Should I be abandoning these practices in preparation for the arrival of HTML 5, and would any of these habits clash directly with the coding for HTML 5?

Also, just to add a note of interest - I see that YouTube are now "bench testing" a version of their site that uses HTML 5 exclusively - i.e., no Flash. More info here: http://mashable.com/2010/01/20/youtube-html5/ , and here to see a live demo: http://www.youtube.com/html5 . Interestingly, it states that only Google Chrome and Safari are currently compliant with HTML 5, which is very interesting, meaning that the "big two" browsers (IE and Firefox) are not yet supporting it, perhaps waiting to see which wins the "coding format war", XHTML 2 or HTML 5. With YouTube (owned by Google) showing a clear support for HTML 5, maybe that will tip the scales?

Thanks again for the interesting replies, gentlemen! :)

Best wishes,

Chris

Permalink Reply by Gerald Hornsby on January 21, 2010 at 1:44pm

Hi Chris

Thanks for the YouTube link. I've just tried it (Safari on Mac) and it certainly works. The video seems to be much clearer and more well-defined. Or maybe I'm imagining it?

Does anyone know what difference there is? Or does it give more functionality to websites?

Gerald

Permalink Reply by Chris Davis on January 21, 2010 at 2:07pm

Hi Gerald,

Glad to know the video works well for you - I've tried it on Safari for Windows and it looks horribly pixilated, and so I'm assuming that Safari's Windows browser only supports up to HTML 4! Another thing motivating me to download Google Chrome, then!! ;)

Best wishes,

Chris

Gerald Hornsby said:

Hi Chris

Thanks for the YouTube link. I've just tried it (Safari on Mac) and it certainly works. The video seems to be much clearer and more well-defined. Or maybe I'm imagining it?

Does anyone know what difference there is? Or does it give more functionality to websites?

Gerald

Permalink Reply by Gerald Hornsby on January 21, 2010 at 11:35pm

I've got Google Chrome on this Mac, as well as PC. It works fine, but for almost everything, I use Safari on Mac. Occasionally, I use Firefox for the webdev addons. It's the same with IE - most people don't move away from IE on PC because it works fine for them. Why change?

Gerald

Permalink Reply by Harvey Raybould on January 24, 2010 at 6:38am

Hi,

I am still an IE user and it’s hard to break away to be honest. Although, I must admit IE8 is much much better than versions 6 or 7. I do like you Gerald use Firefox fairly regularly for the web developer and SEO tools, which in my opinion are far superior.

Regarding HTMLv5 it is hard to say if you would really find any benefits. HTMlv4 is 10 years old now and is in need of a revamp to bring it up to modern standards. Apparently so I have read, work on version 5 actually started in 2004, so I guess there has been no real hurry to release an update, which probably shows how good v4 actually was.

As far as I can see v5 has improved web structuring. In v4 you had (divs) such as header, footer, nav etc, the new HTML removes the need for DIVs and has replaced them with specific elements.

So instead of div class=”header” you would just write header

This makes the code clearer and easier to write, plus I would imagine there will be performance enhancements.

Other enhancements relate to Video and Audio. Previously HTML itself had no means of embedding video or audio into pages and relied on Flash Players. In version 5 you have video and audio elements, enabling you to remove the flash player and put the code directly into HTML.

I hope that helps a little.

Regards

Harvey

Permalink Reply by Dave Cooper on January 24, 2010 at 10:46am

Hi,
The reason I think HTML5 is going to be here a lot faster than you'd expect is because the embedded video capability is a killer ap for YouTube. Previously their content has run on Adobe Flash and this just isn't a goer for mobile devices. Last year Adobe came up with Flash Lite which is a slimmed down version aimed at mobiles but it still has long load times, needs a pokey processor and (this is the crunch!) all that processing takes your battery down. YouTube is massive and if they go for HTML5 big time the browsers* are going to be adding support for embedded video so fast it'll make our eyes cross. Who's going to want to be left holding a browser that won't play YouTube content??
Dave

(*Be interesting to see how MS handle this one!)

Permalink Reply by Harvey Raybould on January 25, 2010 at 5:55am

Hi Dave

Yep I agree. The more and more I read, the experts are predicting 2010 as the year of Video. However I have been hearing this for a long time, especially effective video streaming on mobile devices.

YouTube is set to expload again and if this happens I am sure that we will see an HTMLv5 very soon, otherwise there will still be a link missing.

Regards

Harvey

Permalink Reply by Gerald Hornsby on January 25, 2010 at 12:07pm

Harvey Raybould said:

Hi Dave

The more and more I read, the experts are predicting 2010 as the year of Video. However I have been hearing this for a long time, especially effective video streaming on mobile devices.

YouTube is set to expload again and if this happens I am sure that we will see an HTMLv5 very soon, otherwise there will still be a link missing.

Harvey

Hi Harvey

More and more people are using video to supplement their website and blog content. A lot of the "Internet Marketing" gurus are adding 'teaser' videos for their subscription services. And a lot of the subscription services are 'home' videos, videos of training seminars, and screencasts. And I've noticed a lot of internet suppliers are uploading screencasts and information videos to YouTube (thereby saving their bandwidth), and then embedding these on their websites.

Interesting times ...

Gerald

Permalink Reply by Harvey Raybould on January 25, 2010 at 12:31pm

Hi Gerald,

Yes interesting times indeed. I am really hoping that Compila can develop some Video content for exchange and our blog over the coming months, as I really think video is such a great learning and information medium.

Take care

Harvey

Permalink Reply by Tony Rolfe on January 25, 2010 at 11:04pm

Hi all,

I have been reading this post with interest. One thing I would like to throw in, is how will the old browsers cope with HTML 5 sites. Are we going to have to create yet another style sheet for ealier browser functions?

So far we have to create CSS sheets for IE 6,7 and 8, FF, Safari and Opera as well as a mobile CSS. Will we now have to add another set in for HTML 5?

These new technologies are great for what they bring to the browser, but they also can add extra work for the designer. I remember the good old days of using tables to create websites that would display in any browser!

Regards

Tony

Harvey Raybould said:

Hi Gerald,

Yes interesting times indeed. I am really hoping that Compila can develop some Video content for exchange and our blog over the coming months, as I really think video is such a great learning and information medium.

Take care

Harvey