Ryan Roberts

In defense of HTML 5 and that 2022 date

HTML 5 has been getting a lot of focus lately, especially the 2022 date of when it will apparently be ready.

I’ve considering writing about this for a while now but today Ian Hickson (HTML 5 editor) posted a comment on Jeffrey Zeldman’s blog that for me pretty much clears up the matter:

I’ve mentioned 2022 as a date I hope to see two complete and bug free implementations of all of HTML5 in various articles, but I wasn’t aware of one where I was quoted as actually saying it’d only be ready by then. The plan is to have it more or less “ready” by October this year. (We’ve never had two complete and bug free implementations of any Web spec before as far as I know, so 2022 is pretty optimistic in a way.)

Sounds much better don’t you think? Pretty much ready by the end of 2009.

Let’s just get this straight — last call working draft is planned for October 2009, Candidate Recommendation status is set for 2012 and then the Proposed Recommendation should appear around 2022. In-between 2012 and 2022 browser vendors will implement the Proposed Recommendation and (hopefully) providing feedback to further refine the spec. The WHATWG will work on detailed test suites (or I presume it will be them) so browser vendors can aim for that “complete and bug free implementation”. But as Hixie says this hasn’t been done before so 2022 isn’t such a crazy date.

Over the next few years we should expect to get increased support for and use out of HTML 5, certainly far in advance of 2022… In fact you can start using HTML 5 today if you like.

You can find out more about HTML 5 including the time-line in this Tech Republic interview with Ian Hickson.

Firefox Accessibility Extension

Developed by Jon Gunderson of the Illinois Center for Information Accessibility, the Firefox Accessibility Extension is a valuable addon that aims to assist web developers and people with disabilities in navigation, running accessibility checks, reports, styling and much more. It’s essentially an accessibility version of the web developer toolbar addon for Firefox.

Thanks to @SeanDelaney for pointing it out.

A nice example of paper prototyping

Each one on its own square by Fabricio Marchezini, Karine Drumond & Leandro Alves, is an animated paper exploration of a new web browser concept aimed at improving user productivity.

The concept was created by the group for Mozilla Labs ‘Design Challenge: Summer 09’.

Quick Tip: Combine IE6 & IE7 style sheets into one CSS file

The star filter filter hacks and conditional comment are both well known methods of targeting Internet Exploder 6 and 7, and by using these together in one style sheet served from an IE conditional comment you can cut down on HTTP requests, focus your work into one file and help improve your productivity.

Start off with a CC targeting Internet Explorer 7 and lower;

<!--[if lte IE 7]>
	<link href="ie.css" type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" media="screen"/>
<![endif]-->

Now in this style sheet you’ll want to use the above mentioned filters to target both IE 6 and 7, here’s an example;

/* IE6 styling */
* html #content {
	width: 300px;
	}

/* IE7 styling */
*+html #content {
	width: 200px;
	}

But what about IE8? Well so far I don’t know of any hacks to specifically target version 8. This isn’t anywhere near as bad as the previous versions when it comes to bugs but I have come across some over the past few weeks. Let me know if you find anything or if you work out a better solution to above.