I have been doing some research into HTML 5 for work recently, so I thought that I would share some of my findings anyone who is interested. Look out front end web designers, this new version will give us the tools we need to create some great design! I am very happy with the possibility of endless possibilities with HTML. Just when I thought I knew most of the tags, elements, and attributes in HTML, here comes another version with a whole new set of tools that we can use to render design, content, and typography on the web. Right now there are several companies that make browsers that are working very hard to ensure that their product is compatible with as many elements and attributes of this new version of HTML.
One of the more interesting items I like with HTML 5 is the sectioning of content that it provides. It gives the web publisher the ability to have tags that define that particular area of a web page rather that just wrapping all content into DIVs and Spans. Some of these tags include but are not limited to:
SEO and HTML 5
Mentioned previously are a few very basic new tags available that do not require any special programming ability. I believe that there will be a niche for organizing these tags to enhance SEO. This sectioning will change the way SEO is used across the web by giving authors the ability to specifically wrap their content in HTML elements that provide a specific definition of a particular section of a web page. Browsers will immediately know what part of the site is the navigation, or who the author is, or what time a business is open. There are endless creative opportunities to optimize your web page for bots and user agents. The <aside> tag is very interesting because now you can define the section of your site that provides advertising, archives, etc. so that user agents will understand that a certain part of your site is the advertising area, or a tag cloud, etc. These tags will be able to provide a more defined road map for where the user agents need to travel along your website. Currently, many developers use site maps to help user agents find their way, however the new tags will allow publishers to steer bots and user agents more precisely. I am only speculating what may happen with SEO and HTML 5, however I am certain that this will change everything. There are many pages out there that are beginning to use HTML to in the next few months there will be more data to analyze.
CSS3
CSS3 works hand in hand with HTML 5. The new features in the third version of CSS will give web publishers the ability to do a number of different things than what they could in previous version of HTML. The most important CSS3 item that I think is worth mentioning is the ability to use almost any typeface that is available. At the moment there are two types of typefaces that are able to be linked to a style sheet, True Type, and Open Type. I recommend using Open Type for anything and everything since they can be used on both Macs and Pcs without too many issues. The only issue is that certain browsers will not use Open Type for font rendering, so there is a need for a True Type Font as well for downlaoding, if you want to provide cross browser support.
Here is a great article that discusses Cross Browser font issues with the new @font-face attribute: http://blog.themeforest.net/tutorials/how-to-achieve-cross-browser-font-face-support/
Here are some tags in CSS3 that are new:
Please return to my Blog in the future for more CSS3 and HTML 5 entries.
Thanks,
Scott
