• 0

Is It Worth Using HTML5 Yet?


  

36 members have voted

  1. 1. Moving to HTML5, is the world ready?

    • Yes, we are ready today
    • Almost, but not this year
    • Getting there, but not until 2012
    • No, not for many years yet


Question

Hey all,

I've been out of uni for a year now, and I'm settled into a job, and life is good. However, over the past 12 months, I've been neglecting my poor portfolio website to the point of dereliction, only putting in a couple of crappy blog posts in to give it any sort of life, and I'm just about ready to give it a complete overhaul to bring it up to date. However, I'm conflicted...

I've developed a nice WordPress template that I'm happy with, and its almost finished, but I would like to make use of the new semantic tags in HTML5. I've read a good bit of the W3C recommendation, and I've read numerous tutorials on using it, and I want in, but I'm worried about backwards compatibility.

Specifically, what concerns me is Internet Explorer (shock horror), and the fact that it requires a JavaScript hack in order to display HTML5 properly. I'm glad for the fact that the JavaScript hack works, but worry that people that have JavaScript disabled are going to see garbage. I use things like JQuery on the site already, but all of my JavaScript is designed in such a way that it degrades gracefully into static HTML if the user has Greasemonkey or has disabled JavaScript entirely. The IE HTML5 hack doesn't degrade though, so if I style an HTML5 tag, and the JavaScript doesn't run, there's a real risk that the page is going to look FUBAR.

IE is fortunately an outside contender in my browser stats, with only 7% of my visitors using it, but anything above zero is worth considering (IMO).

Are my concerns justified, or are there so few people with JavaScript disabled in IE that there's no point catering for them?

tl;dr: I want to use HTML5 on my portfolio (not many visitors), but some of my visitors run IE, and I risk cutting them off if they have JavaScript disabled. Is it worth the risk?

TIA :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 answers to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 0

It really depends on your website and your target audience. For instance, it would be foolish of my company to start taking advantage of HTML5 this early. Our interest is to maximize the number of people surfing to our website and to not leave anybody who might be on an older web browser out. Basically, we can't risk losing those handful of hits from outdated browsers and will have to rely on our site statistics to guide us in the right direction towards maximum support.

On the other hand, I think that popular websites (the sites that people get online specifically for), such as Hulu and YouTube could switch to HTML5 without any problem. People want to use their services, and will likely upgrade specifically for them. If YouTube went all HTML5, there would be a mass migration of users to HTML5 compliant web browsers which would make it easier for "the rest of us" to update to the new standards.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Think about the users with default settings, they don't touch any of the "scary" settings and just leave it as it is -- meaning JS is still on.

Just think about the default Google page, they use JavaScript. If Google decided it was safe to use JavaScript for a major site, I'm betting it would be safe for you as well.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

You might not be able to use all the new semantic elements in browsers, but definitely switch to the new doctype and start validating.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

You might not be able to use all the new semantic elements in browsers, but definitely switch to the new doctype and start validating.

if say i only switched the doctype, would that be theoretically better or worse than sticking with xhtml 1.1?

since this thread is about html5 in general, i guess it'd be a good time to ask something i've been wondering for a few days...

currently the beginning of my document looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet media="all" href="./style.css" type="text/css"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en-CA">

if i were to switch to HTML5 and serve it as xml, what should i keep/get rid of? i'm assuming it'll look something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet media="all" href="./style.css" type="text/css"?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xml:lang="en-CA">

or should i keep the xmlns as well? it looks like the namespace is already assumed.

i guess as a follow up question, would there be a qualitative difference between sending it as text/xml, application/xml, or application/xhtml+xml?

thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

That is XHTML, since there no IE support for it, its best to send it as text/html and use the normal HTML5 syntax:

<!doctype html> 
<html> 
 <head> 
  ...
  <link rel='stylesheet' href='./style.css' /> 
  ...
 </head> 
 <body> 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:mathml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" lang="en">

That's what I'm using on my site (in HTML and XML mode), it's a bit of duplication and can cause a bug in IE6 though.

In XML mode you don't need the doctype (all it does is tell the browser to use standards mode, but XML mode always triggers standards mode), and you don't need the XML PI in HTML mode (it doesn't hurt, but will cause IE6 to use quirks mode)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

HTML5 & CSS3 READINESS : http://html5readiness.com/

Many of these features are ready to implement today.

We don't have to wait for entire specs to be completed, we can start using some hawtness now.

Each ray on the infographic represents a specific feature implementation of HTML5 and CSS3, like drag and drop, audio, and animation. By mousing over one of the rays (you'll need to visit the link below for the full interactive graphic), you can see which feature it represents, and which of eight major browsers currently support it. It's pretty easy to tell which ones are further along, but for a better comparison between browsers, you can check the "fixed browser positions" box to line up the browser colors too. Even WebKit-based browsers like Safari and Chrome, who have heavily touted their HTML5 support, don't support every feature yet (granted, they are pretty darn close). Hit the link to play with the infographic, and let us know how excited (or disappointed) you are with support in your favorite browser in the comments.

http://mashable.com/2010/05/13/browser-html5-css3-ready/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:mathml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" lang="en">

That's what I'm using on my site (in HTML and XML mode), it's a bit of duplication and can cause a bug in IE6 though.

In XML mode you don't need the doctype (all it does is tell the browser to use standards mode, but XML mode always triggers standards mode), and you don't need the XML PI in HTML mode (it doesn't hurt, but will cause IE6 to use quirks mode)

handy reference, thanks :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Actually, just thinking about it, I don't need the MathML and SVG namespaces, so that saves another bit of space.

With them you'd do

<svg:svg>
    <svg:circle r="30" />
</svg:svg>

Without them you'd do

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg">
    <circle r="30" />
</svg>

You don't even need the XMLNS in HTML5 mode (Firefox and IE9 only currently), since an <svg> tag creates an implicit namespaced section (same as <math>)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 0

Thanks for the advice guys. I'm going to change the DOCTYPE, and start validating, and I think I'm going to try to start adding the semantic tags in, but just not bother styling them. Thanks again y'all!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.