As you know, the specification of the new version of HTML and XHTML language is actually a working draft (take a look here for the HTML5 specification tracker) but there are a lot of web designers and developers that already decided to leave the previous version and switch to the new one (you can find a showcase of HTML5 website here). And you what do you think? Is it time to start switching to HTML5?
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Is it time to start switching to HTML5?
by Antonio Lupetti / December 13, 2009 / Posted in: Web Design
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Antonio Lupetti is an italian engineer, pro blogger, Mac user, founder of woorkup.com. He lives in Rome, Italy. Follow Antonio on Twitter or take a look at his Facebook Profile.
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December 13, 2009 at 9:30 am
This is good question but Internet Explorer still alive.
December 13, 2009 at 9:34 am
we have to move forward…
December 13, 2009 at 8:39 pm
The World has to move on…
December 13, 2009 at 9:32 am
i’m using html5 from a long time, since google made the first video on youtube… and it’s amazing…
I love the canvas and all new stuff… and of course it’s the time to switch :)
December 13, 2009 at 9:40 am
HTML5 with CSS is perfect brothers. I love the rounded corners, shadows and more.
December 13, 2009 at 9:43 am
Perhaps, if IE wasn’t around.
HTML5 and CSS3 go hand-in-hand. They’re perfect together.
December 13, 2009 at 9:44 am
It’s true Ethan. IE it’s always a big problem :(
December 13, 2009 at 10:08 am
don’t care about IE .. cuz the IE users will replace it by another browser…. if they found that it does not work prefect…
December 13, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Ahmad –
Blaming the user is a horrible idea. Some users are shackled to IE based on their situations. See http://about.digg.com/blog/much-ado-about-ie6 for more information. Digg does a great analysis on Web Browser support.
Normally when a user see’s that a page doesn’t look right the first thought isn’t, oh I bet Internet Explorer is the reason why this page sucks, it’s got to be this browser and not the site. They almost always think that it’s the site’s fault since most major and common sites they browse will still look fine.
The solution I use is using graceful degradation and still support the current and last iterations of all major browsers. Blaming the user is a horrible approach and isn’t very “friendly” it just screams, I’m a jerk that doesn’t care about you. I’d advise you to rethink your logic for not support IE.
December 13, 2009 at 10:16 am
If we are talking strictly about HTML5 and IE, there is not much to do to make the basics of HTML5 work in all browsers. All it takes is a little javascript:
Now if you are referring to the more advanced features, yes IE does create a problem. However, most of the things we do that makes HTML5 so cool is the new features in CSS3. With that known, we can then know that because of CSS3 text-shadow and box-shadow as well as other features, do not really work in IE. However, there is one easy fix to that that I have found. Create an IE only stylesheet and use IE’s filter:progid function that has almost all the features of CSS3 already built in. Then as IE progresses, your site will just fall back to the CSS3 you have written for all the nice playing browsers.
This is just an opinion and a way that I have found around it. Please feel free to post your udeas and methods.
December 14, 2009 at 2:19 am
html5 can be used right now, in fact Google has be serving its home age as html5 for some time now (check their doctype). If you want to use the new semantic elements, this js solution is the way to go.
The guys at http://html5doctor.com/ are making an excellent job of advising on how to use html5 today
December 13, 2009 at 10:52 am
I’ll start using it once there is a comprehensive guide as to how to use it.
I’m already in the process of using the newer CSS3 properties. I think we all have to move forward.
December 13, 2009 at 10:54 am
I’ll found a HTML5 template (free) http://bit.ly/8EarPt
December 13, 2009 at 12:36 pm
I always love this situation: You work with open minded customers and make some advanced website. Some top manager tries the application or website from his home on an old computer where nothing works and you have to revert to the basics.
It is sad, but I will have to stick to HTML4 for some years while watching the statistics of IE6 usage degreasing slowly… :(
December 13, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Yes! But make sure that the main content; headers, text, navigation, are still legible in IE6. Especially if you are writing about a subject that could be read on older machines or by old people. I don’t think the sites need to or should look exactly the same in all browsers.
Handy JavaScript tool for adding if{…} then {…} statements to CSS. Haven’t had a chance to use so I can’t verify how well it works.
http://www.modernizr.com
December 13, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Well I’m using html5 in my every new project.
For IE, I’m using these scripts
and I have no problems
I’m more concerned about mozilla 2.0 where you have problems with html5 tags and there is no way to fix them.
December 13, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Thanks Ivan. When everyone is concerning the IE fix. you remind us that it is hard to fix for ff2.
December 13, 2009 at 6:38 pm
Well, we should not move on to HTML5 until it’s standard. “Cooler” features don’t justify a change.
December 14, 2009 at 2:10 am
One of the big problems I have with people moving to HTML5 is the way in which support for IE is added – sure a little bit a JavaScript and suddenly IE can style article, section, nav etc. but are we forgetting about Progressive Enhancement (PE)? Surely something on level 3 (JS) shouldn’t be used to add basic support for level 2 (CSS), that’s going in the wrong direction.
Yes PE is all about accessibility, and the content still will be available to all, but it’s the principle of the thing for me. If various elements on the page aren’t positioned where they should be it will probably make life hard for the visitor to use the site, and to me that makes it inaccessible.
Oh and thanks Kyle W for the digg link – I’d never seen it before but it illustrates so many points about IE support so well! Their survery results are exactly what I was looking for, for some research I’m doing!
December 14, 2009 at 2:35 am
There is already HTML5 Wordpress theme :
http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/freedream
December 14, 2009 at 2:48 am
As far as I am aware the boffins at W3C are still recommending that you do not use HTML5 for production sites until it has finalised the standard properly. I have been dabbling with some HTML5 stuff, but only on a development server. This way when it does mature I will have a good amount of experience and will be able to hit the ground running.
I feel it is not fair on a client for me to build a site for them in anything other than a standards compliant format, and for that reason I am sticking to HTML4/XHTML1 for the moment. I keep a close eye on the tracker and W3C site for latest info with my fingers crossed, the world needs HTML5 and CSS3 as soon as possible! :)
December 14, 2009 at 3:56 am
We’ve moved forward in the IE6 question – but we’ve only just recently dropped support for IE6. We’ve no plans to move forward with HTML5 with our standard websites as most of our clients have IE7. However, should we produce a project aimed at the more modern-day generation then we’ll think about it.
We do use HTML5 for our internal applications though.
December 14, 2009 at 9:44 am
It is definitely time to switch to HTML 5. There is no reason no to. Unless, we keep reminding ourselves that for some reason we should be giving IE some slack – I think not. The more developer begin to use HTML 5, the farther the web will be able to go.
December 14, 2009 at 11:54 pm
The longer we stuck in xHTML and HTML 4, the longer we are holding web development back. And also the longer IE sucks.
December 15, 2009 at 2:05 pm
I don’t like to switch to things until they are the standard. I will experiment with it, mess around and know it the best I can for when I finally switch.
Don’t get me wrong, I cannot wait for HTML5 and CSS3 and use it on my production sites. But it simply isn’t there yet in my opinion.
December 17, 2009 at 8:10 pm
NO.
This is because IE doesn’t support CSS3 features. So, why you would want HTML5 without CSS3.
It is announced to IE9 to support CSS3, so I could wait ’till the most of people own a browser with CSS3 support. By the moment a lot of people is changing to Mozilla Firefox or Safari or Google Chrome, so when we have 90% of people using a CSS3 browser, that’s the moment we step over.
You could try with hacks and fixes but it isn’t profitable. Anyway you could practise slicing your work as HTML5, and then make another version of HTML4 or xHTML
December 18, 2009 at 7:49 am
…not unless IE6 is used by more than 2% of people
December 21, 2009 at 1:07 am
Agreed.
December 20, 2009 at 5:50 pm
NO!
I read all the comments here, and some of you are really ignorant OR you dont do web development for a living.
How could you do HTML 5 (not to mention CSS3) when IE7 doesnt support it. Also like it or not, IE6 is still used by a huge portion of the population. and the fact is that depending on WHOM you build sites for , for ex: government office, Lab Company, Western World, Far East, Etc, the proportion of IE6 uses varies dramatically,
I can bet you 2000$ that IE6 in India is triple or 4 times what IE6 is in the US or Western Europe. Why? Because Windows XP can run on almost anything, when it was released it was running on 256mbs orf ram and a CPU at 1Ghz. Almost everyone that has a PC no matter how old it is, (unless it’s really from the stone-age of computers (1995ish and pc’s from that time wont work due to age, so meh) it can run windows xp, and IE6 like it or not really comsumes a lot less rams than Firefox AND on a 256mb machine, really that counts.
I know this is extreme but still.
Another thing is that both Gecko and Webkit have their different interpretations on CSS3 properties
1 uses webkit-border-radius and the other uses border-radious-gecko or something like that. Really do i need to keep in mind all those different properties for different browsers?
And another thing, the w3c html and css validator, currently they interpret html5 and css 3 as invalid markup. for some people who want to have their websites valid this is kinda a deal breaker.
Becauese of this i really suggest you folks keep an open mind and stop dissing IE, IE8 really really is a huge improvement on IE7, they are on the right track, later than most but at least they are on the right track (i am not an ie fanboy, i use firefox exclusively).
And if you run a “i sell things” website, 10% of your visitors may equal 2-5% of your sales. YOU LOSE 2 to 5% of your sales every month by not supporting IE6. When you have a business that makes 100.000 a month 2 to 5% is 2.000 to 5.000 a month + more from them being returning customers if you did a good job at the start so the losses increses exponentially.
December 22, 2009 at 3:32 am
Not… IE6 is still around and some of my clients still ask me to make it IE-friendly :|
January 25, 2010 at 7:26 pm
You always have to cater to your base client…if they’re on IE6 then so be it. I’ve never been comfortable with the way W3C influences everything. Move into HTML5 if you can but a large part of the world population will be in IE6 for years to come…and someone has to cater to them like it or not. Yes, it all has to move forward but it has to be simplified as well…CSS brought about a world of complications (I know that’ll annoy a lot of CSS lovers) but if I can find a way to get it to look right across browsers I’ll ignore every rule out there to make my client happy.
February 17, 2010 at 6:12 pm
I agree that we shouldn’t adopt HTML5 until it’s standard and the IE issue has been resolved. Our clients and users needs, expectations and browser capabilities trumps our collective wishes in this case. That said, I’m very much looking forward to being able to move forward with HTML5!