What is HTML5? How can it help build an accessible web?
HTML5, Accessibility & Open Standards: BSC Talk by Bruce Lawson
The vision: making the web (Communication medium) freely accessible to all, regardless of interface, device or physical ability. Does that sound like a good vision to you?
Last night I was lucky enough to be asked along to a BCS talk by Bruce Lawson, an accessibility and standards evangelist working for Opera.
I share his vision, the ability to access the web (one web) from any platform in the best way regardless of physical ability.
HTML5: Is a super-set of HTML4, it extends the markup in a few ways:
- It returns errors in bad code – but in a uniformed way across all browsers.
- It includes real world elements over the <div> tags of (soon to be) old such as <article> <canvas> <video> <footer> <aside>
- Off-line storage – if your connection is lost in low signal areas
- Manifests – so you can continue to use on-line applications, off-line
- All these enable the developer / designer to write better formed code.
- Advanced custom controls for forms such as thin client (client side) validation, inclusion of basic Reg-Ex for form fields, default calendar for date entry and have you ever wanted a slider bar in HTML? – now you can.
It goes without saying that if the browser or HTML5 processing can perform these actions on data input then there is going to be less traffic being pushed from client to server, server to client. You do not have to push each field over to the server for validation, even the HTTP request for Ajax needs to regularly poll the server.
I think my opinions reflect that of Bruce’s when i say that HTML5 is coming, and its coming fast, it is 100% backward compatible with HTML4 (with some forking to maintain logic decisions) as it is a super-set of the old mark-up. I’m excited and with the inclusion of HTML5 on a global scale I think we will see the drop of device specific duplicate sites, a lower overhead in coding and a drastically better experience for all you can access the web.
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I will be posting links to some more resources as they become available! What do you think of HTML5? Have heard of it before? Used it? love it or hate it? I’d like to hear your thoughts.
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Sounds like it was a good discussion. I definitely agree with your conclusions that this is coming fast, and I think it really is needed soon.
We’re already at a time where the web can be accessed from so many devices, prehaps before many of those devices are truely capable of handeling the mobile services they offer at a reasonable enough standard. The iPhone can do it, but what about some of those older devices which try to compete?
Soon enough the competition will catch up and the demand for the ‘real web’ in your pocket will be massive. it won’t matter what device you have, you either have the ‘real web’ or you have nothing at all.
(However even with the iPhone many services offered iPhone specific versions of their site – Goggle did it, Facebook etc – but I think they realised soon enough that this wasn’t the point of the iPhone and gave up developing these any further. I may be wrong, but this is the impression I got from the community.)
This sounds like a great solution to satisfy all that. Looking forward to it!
James, interesting read, I’ve been meaning to look into whats happening with HTML 5 more, but was under the impression it won’t be finished for another decade, is that old information i’ve got?
According to a few sources I’d say it was round the corner. its implementable already in some browsers i think. You have to fork your code to make it back compatible but works fine. I’m waiting on some more information on this and will post it up in blog style fashion when i get it!
Glad you enjoyed my talk. HTML 5 is pretty much a superset of HTML 4, but there are some important differences (some attributes dropped, some redefined). Here’s a document from the w3c that summarises the differences http://www.w3.org/TR/html5-diff/
Will G: HTML5 is happening now: here’s a list of support in current browsers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines_(WHATWG)
I know I’m polluting your comments, James, but I’ve just posted those presentations onto the Information Superhighway ™:
http://people.opera.com/brucel/talks/2009/bournemouth/standards/index.html
http://people.opera.com/brucel/talks/2009/bournemouth/mobile/index.html
Polluting? Not at all, if its good information for anyone interested in HTML5 and the like then post away Bruce. I know there are lots of people out there looking for the information, let make it easier for them to find! Thanks for taking time out to post!!
J
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