HTML 5 – Thoughts on the new standard
March 2nd, 2010A few years back it was widely agreed that HTML 4.1 was the last release of the HTML family of standards. After all, we were moving towards XML by way of XHTML, and all our web experiences would be better for it.
Times, they are a changin’.
Unless you are in the web design world, you may not have heard much about HTML 5. You may have notice, however, that browsers continue to move forward and offer new capabilities – like Mozilla’s Firefox latest upgrades touting open video and HTML 5 support among other things. These may spark your interest from a consumer point of view, but should also spark your curiosity about what you need to be doing as a web designer.
First, should we all adopt HTML 5 and start to move forward with it in our designs right now? I’d say – it depends. While the standard is not yet finalized, we do see where it is headed and we also see how browsers are starting to adopt many of the changes (click here for some of the differences between HTML 4 and HTML 5). But this brings up an issue you need to take into consideration – adoption of new technologies by the masses.
If you have looked at any of your web site statistics, you may find that adoption of new browsers / technologies has slowed. Don’t get me wrong, there are some that adopt right off the bat (as shown in this older IE7 / Firefox 2 adoption rate post) but others may choose not to adopt for a myriad of reasons (older hardware, distaste for change, if it isn’t broke don’t fix it mindset, etc.). In your web statistics, you may be surprised how many IE 5 and 6 (along with Firefox 2 and other older browser versions) are hitting your sites.
You, as a web designer, need to look at the new standards and test against them to ensure what was created earlier still renders as you intended. If you have created your code using the standards, then backwards compatibility should not be much of an issue.
The issues seem to come in when you code exclusively to bleeding edge standards, test with the latest browsers, then wonder why your site does not get the traffic / response / praise from your customer as anticipated – and they are not using your computer loaded with the latest software wizardry. So, as we have said since design began – we tend to forget that we need to design to include the lowest common denominator. And for me, as I’ve stated before, I think of my wonderful mother. How would this impact her and the computer / browser she uses?
Technology is moving forward, and we must move with it. As we move, don’t forget about others who may not be as technically savvy as you are – the folks who may not upgrade just because something new is available. Stick with the standards in coding, but allow for others to come on board as time moves forward. And when you get the time, be sure to look at the HTML 5 specs so you can be familiar with (and start to adopt as you move forward) what is starting to become reality.







