wow .. talk about out of the ashes ..  

What do your clients want you to do with it?

My clients wouldn't know HTML5 from PHP or ASP.  My clients want something that works well and gives their customers a good experience and they wouldn't care how that was accomplished as long as it works well and everywhere their target customers roam.  Where I have begun to use it, it works well, but it's probably more for me than for them at this point.  CSS3 however is another story.  That just makes everything look cool and who doesn't like that?

Does Dreamweaver CS5 functionality suffice or do you have to complement it with handcoding or by using extensions?

Not yet.  The HTML5 pack is going in the right direction, I think, but as the spec is still evolving, there is going to be a lot of change before it settles out and of course, there is the browser compatibility issue.  It's a lot of fun however .. and it makes a lot of sense in terms of structure and adds simplicity in much of the spec.

Welcome back to crazyland ..

Nancy

Keep up to date is my motto.

I thought it was "Deal With It"?

David_Powers wrote:

Unfortunately, not everyone has the same motto with regard to their browsers. The sidebar drops down below the main content in IE6 and IE7 (still an estimated 23% of all browser usage according to http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2). It looks a dog's dinner in Firefox 2, but you can probably safely ignore it because it now has less than half of one percent share.

Totally agree, but then we can do what our predecessors did and issue separate style sheets for our IE6/7 customers. Firefox users are usually bright enough to have the latest versions of their browser.

It hardly seems a worthwhile argument for not using HTML5.

Gramps.

Your example of equal height columns has nothing to do with HTML5. It's controlled by the table layout features of CSS2.1 that are supported by most modern browsers, including IE8.

True, I merely wanted to show that HTML5 can be used now. Have a look at the markup

HTML5 is mainly concerned with semantic markup and new functionality, such as local storage, native support for video and audio, and improved form input fields. Presentation remains the role of CSS.

Again, HTML5 can be used now. Have a look here http://html5doctor.com/how-to-use-html5-in-your-client-work-right-now/

There are definite advantages and very few disadvantages

For twenty eleven

HTML5 is the best under heaven

Go HTML5

Gramps

pziecina wrote:

 

Unfortunately the take-up of anything will always depend upon the user, the client and the designer/developer. The problem is similar to the use of css for layout vs's tables being used for layout, no matter what one does as long as the 'old' way of doing things is still supported, (and help is available when something goes wrong) then any arguments for doing it another way, (even if recommended and better) will always have its opponents.

I have no problem with the idea of using HTML5. Some parts of it are extremely useful, and should be adopted immediately. For example, the doctype is perfectly safe to use on any website, as are the new types of form input. The great advantage of using the date and number input types is that they're already supported by some browsers. Older browsers simply treat them as normal text input fields.

I'm less excited by the new semantic elements, because there's no support for them in any assistive technology. It's probably more effective to start using the WAI-ARIA role attributes first. I also think there's a lot of confusion about the way articles can be nested sections and vice-versa. I've done a lot of reading about this subject, and there seems to be little consensus about the most appropriate way of marking up documents. That's why I'm going to make haste slowly in that regard.

I have just finished reading Jeremy Keith's "HTML5 for Web Designers" published by A Book Apart. What struck me was the way he left the semantic elements to the end, and expressed similar doubts about their usage. Most other books and articles wax lyrical about how wonderfully semantic the web is going to be thanks to HTML5. I have my doubts. When I look at the daily procession of visitors to this forum who have no idea about paragraph tags, never mind divs or spans, I foresee websites constructed with a horrendous tag soup. That's not to say that the idea of semantic tags is bad. I'm just pessimistic about how they'll end up being used.

Now the normal argument. Users must see the same design across all browsers, well, how many normal users will look at a site on more than one browser? We may compare sites across browsers, but the average user, unless it is a comparison of the site on their pc with a site on a handheld/smartphone then probably never.

I think Andy Clarke has the right approach in his "Hardboiled Web Design". He sees the proliferation of mobile devices as the perfect opportunity to convince clients that it's impossible to make websites look exactly the same across all devices.

The really interesting developments at the moment are coming more from CSS3 than from HTML5.