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Ask HN: Does HTML5 excite you? Why or why not?

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Re: Ask HN: Does HTML5 excite you? Why or why not?

#31

Post by jacobolus »

drhowarddrfine wrote: post #27
waterlesscloud wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the main issue. The user base for it will be relatively small for several years. Hopefully many of the people on IE 6 will leapfrog to a HTML 5 browser in the next few years, that would solve a lot of issues.

How does that affect you? Your HTML markup will work in HTML5, too. In any case, I keep reading no one will use it for years yet most of the leading developers and designers I know are using it today. And I'm joining them since all my markup is now HTML5 as of six months ago.

When you say that your markup is HTML5, do you just mean that you changed the doctype at the top (That's trivial, and its only real effect is saving a few bytes, though I suppose it's a nice symbolic gesture), or that you are now using all of the new semantic elements like and and , using instead of plugin-based video, including features like drag-and-drop, or offline use of data-heavy apps, &c. &c.?

Re: Ask HN: Does HTML5 excite you? Why or why not?

#32

Post by jacobolus »

sixpoint8 wrote: post #22

Front End developer and graphic designer (xHTML/CSS/Design) HTML5 makes me cry inside, part of me died when HTML5 gained browser support. To me, HTML5 is all about GIT'R'DONE; it's an evolution, an odd growth on the body of HTML4, rather than setting a newer, better foundation. :(

The only plausible alternative that anyone ever set forward is complete stagnation.... I’m hard pressed to call that preferable, especially if we’re talking about “foundations”. Be sure to notice that browsers still haven’t finished implementing HTML 4 and CSS 2, more than a decade after their specification. Also notice that when you say you write "XHTML", your code is almost certainly not being treated as XML by browsers.

Re: Ask HN: Does HTML5 excite you? Why or why not?

#33

Post by jacobolus »

farmerwu wrote: post #26

When I first started thinking about it and studying it, I found it downright exciting. So much potential. But as with most thing the devil is in the details. And we just don't have enough details yet. So much could change between now and when it actually gets implemented that it may turn out to be a big disappointment.

> we just don't have enough details yet

What do you mean we don't have enough details?http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/

> So much could change

Like what?

Re: Ask HN: Does HTML5 excite you? Why or why not?

#38

Post by simonw »

As a client- and server-side developer I'm extremely excited about HTML5. For the first time in a decade, browsers are getting new capabilities! HTML 5 is much more than just new tags - we're talking offline support, concurrency with web workers, canvas, geolocation, native audio and video, WebSockets, a supported method of making cross-domain API calls...

HTML 5 is clearly aiming to bring the open web platform up to par with desktop APIs. I expect many desktop applications to be developed using HTML5+CSS+JavaScript within just a few years.

And even if that doesn't spike your interest, there's the critically important role the HTML 5 spec pays in standardising what we already have. It's ridiculous that XMLHttpRequest, one of the most useful modern browser APIs, has no spec - every browser implements it by reverse engineering the others, who in turn reverse engineered IE (which is closed source, so who knows if they got it right?). HTML5 fixes that. It also specifies things like innerHTML, ContentEditable, the execution order for script files, all that DOM level 0 stuff that never made it in to an official spec.

Finally, HTML5 specifies a formal error model for HTML for the first time. This means it will actually be possible to implement a new browser from scratch without having to spend years reverse engineering the behaviour of IE and friends when faced with invalid markup.

I'm amazed to see so many web developers unexcited by HTML 5. This is the first time our core platform has seen any serious evolution since HTML4.01 was published in 1999!

As for browser support, it's happening right now. If you develop for the iPhone / mobile WebKit stuff most of the above features are sitting there waiting for you to use them. Try this page in your iPhone for example:

http://simonwillison.net/static/2009/navigator.geolocation.h...

Even IE is catching up - IE8 supported a bunch of HTML5 concepts (key/value based storage, cross document messaging, hashchange event and more) and IE9 is set to support even more.

HTML 5 is the most exciting thing to happen to web development in a very long time.

Re: Ask HN: Does HTML5 excite you? Why or why not?

#39

Post by simonw »

sixpoint8 wrote: post #22

Front End developer and graphic designer (xHTML/CSS/Design) HTML5 makes me cry inside, part of me died when HTML5 gained browser support. To me, HTML5 is all about GIT'R'DONE; it's an evolution, an odd growth on the body of HTML4, rather than setting a newer, better foundation. :(

Did you ever actually try running a site using proper XHTML? I ran my blog like that (serving the correct content type to non-IE browsers) for a few years and found it to be a ton of hassle for absolutely no benefit.

Re: Ask HN: Does HTML5 excite you? Why or why not?

#40

Post by aw3c2 »

I was excited about standards on the audio and video formats. Since that has been cancelled HTML5 has no advantages over my current love XHTML. Both programmer and designer but both are just hobbies and my sites are mostly static (and I hate Javascript).
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