[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AusOPz8Ww80[/youtube]
“Google’s HTML 5 Work: What’s Next?” talks about the possibilities of HTML 5 for developers and the way Google thinks the new elements could improve our experience using web applications.
You can also download the 20 slides in PDF format.
aside is not a sidebarSomething that I’ve seen in some of the sites that are starting to work with HTML5 is the use of the aside element as a sidebar. Maybe this comes from the misinterpretation of the current definition?
The aside element represents a section of a page that consists of content that is tangentially related to the content around the aside element, and which could be considered separate from that content. Such sections are often represented as sidebars in printed typography.
The element can also be used for typographical effects like pull quotes.
The definition uses the word “sidebar”, but I think that the meaning is something closer to the “pull quotes” part than to what we know as a website’s sidebar. From what I understand about that definition, I would use it to wrap some content that is related to the current article or section, but with information that’s not essential to understand it, like complementary information, trivia, etc.
This is the example from the definition. The following example shows how an
:aside is used to mark up background material on Switzerland in a much longer news story on Europe
<aside> <h1>Switzerland</h1> <p>Switzerland, a land-locked country in the middle of geographic Europe, has not joined the geopolitical European Union, though it is a signatory to a number of European treaties.</p> </aside>
But I haven’t seen a clear definition to know for sure what would be the ideal element for a standard sidebar. If a sidebar is just navigation, it could be wrapped in a nav element. Maybe it could even be a footer.
Since not everything is related to the main content and not everything is navigation, I thought that the best fit for this site (the one you’re in right now) would be a separate section element, but I’m not completely sure that there’s not a better alternative.
What do you think would be the best element for a sidebar in HTML 5?
The World Wide Web’s markup language has always been HTML. HTML was primarily designed as a language for semantically describing scientific documents, although its general design and adaptations over the years has enabled it to be used to describe a number of other types of documents.
The main area that has not been adequately addressed by HTML is a vague subject referred to as Web Applications. This specification attempts to rectify this, while at the same time updating the HTML specifications to address issues raised in the past few years.
It may seem kind of obvious but not all developers are aware that a great place to start learning about and understanding the purpose of HTML 5 is by reading its introduction by the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group.
We CAN’T just fix HTML every 10-15 years with a 5-10 year process. This is the only shot for a generation. That is a huge responsibility not just for those directly responsible for the specification, but all of use who take more than a passing interest in these issues.
You can read the entire comment (and the discussion were it came from) in Zeldman‘s post about the nav element.
Via Simplebits
jPlayer is a great idea that takes advantage of the audio tag in HTML 5 to create an extremely customizable (just HTML and CSS) audio player using jQuery. You can get some ideas by looking at the demos.
Since support for HTML 5 is still evolving and even some new browsers don’t fully support the standard, you can’t expect older browsers to display your HTML 5 sites correctly.
Here are a few tutorials on how to make older browsers like Internet Explorer 6 display HTML 5 sites correctly:
video tagThe video element colud allow us to include a video or movie without the need of a plugin such as Adobe Flash, which seems to be the de facto standard nowadays. But one of the main problems for a massive implementation is the lack of an agreement for a common video codec on all browsers.
The two most popular candidates seem to be Ogg Theora (open source) and H.264 (proprietary) but…
Ogg Theora‘s quality-per-bit is not yet suitable for the volume handled by YouTube.
So, what could be the future of the video implementation? Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML 5 specification, sees to possible solutions:
1. Ogg Theora encoders continue to improve. Off-the-shelf hardware Ogg Theora decoder chips become available. Google ships support for the codec for long enough without getting sued that Apple‘s concern regarding submarine patents is reduced. => Theora becomes the de facto codec for the Web.
2. The remaining H.264 baseline patents owned by companies who are not willing to license them royalty-free expire, leading to H.264 support being available without license fees. => H.264 becomes the de facto codec for the Web.
It seems that, for now, there’s no chance for a standard solution. For the time being, we can see some beta implementations of the video tag in sites like Dailymotion or Youtube, each with their own approach to the subject.