Klaus Förster - HTML5 Guidelines for Web Developers

Klaus Frster
Bernd ggl

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Frster, Klaus, 1964
[HTML 5. English]
HTML5 guidelines for Web developers / Klaus Frster, Bernd ggl.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-321-77274-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. HTML (Document markup language) 2. Internet programming. 3.
Web site development. I. ggl, Bernd. II. Title. III. Title: HTML 5
guidelines for Web developers.
QA76.625.F6713 2012
006.74dc23
2011014135

Copyright 2011 Pearson Education, Inc.

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ISBN-13: 978-0-321-77274-9
ISBN-10: 0-321-77274-1

Text printed in the United States on recycled paper at RR Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana. First printing, June 2011

Thanks to Andrea and Sabineyou are wonderful!

In 2010, HTML5 became the buzzword on the web developer scene. Large companies, such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft, began to use the new technology. The popularity of the catchword HTML5 grew, not least of all because of the heated debate between Apple and Adobe over whether this would mean the end of Flash.

In this book, we give you extensive insight into the new possibilities of HTML5. In addition to the classic specification components, such as video, audio, canvas, intelligent forms, offline applications, and microdata (to name but a few), this overview also includes topics in the immediate context of HTML5for example, geolocation, web storage, WebSockets, and web workers.

Numerous compact, clear, and practical examples illustrate the new elements and techniques in HTML5. There is something here for everyone, whether you decide you want to construct a web log, program your own video and audio player, use the browser as a graphics program, work with geographical data, test to the limit the capacity of your browser, or prefer to live out your playful nature by trying a quiz with drag and drop or playing Battleships! with WebSockets. We also give you plenty of tips and tricks regarding JavaScript and the DOM.

It is to be expected that sooner or later all browsers, in order to remain competitive in the future, will accommodate HTML5. We therefore decided not to include workarounds and compatibility libraries in most cases. In this book you will find pure HTML5, supported in our examples by at least one browser, but in most cases supported already by several manufacturers. For an up-to-date and complete reference of the new HTML elements, we refer you to the Internet. You will find the relevant links in the appropriate text passages of this book.

How you decide to explore this book is entirely up to you. The individual chapters do not necessarily have to be read consecutively and are designed to be easily understandable, even if you have not yet read the other chapters. So, you can read the book in the traditional way, from front to back; alternatively, you can read it from back to front or in any order, letting your curiosity guide you.

You should definitely have a basic knowledge of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS; a willingness to work with a different browser for a change, not just the one you are used to; and above all, a desire to discover something new. Try new ideas, such as those in this book, or have a look at the companion website where you can see all the examples in color. Decide what you want to do and, most important, have fun!

The companion website can be found at http://html5.komplett.cc/welcome.

The authors of this book are as versatile and multifaceted as the new web standard they were brave enough to write about while it was still in development.

Klaus Frster, an open source enthusiast, works at the Department of Geography of the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He has attended numerous SVG Open conferences as speaker, reviewer, and workshop leader, and contributed SVG modules to the free software projects PostGIS, GRASS GIS, and SpatiaLite.

Bernd ggl, lecturer and system administrator at the University of Innsbruck, is the coauthor of a book on PHP and MySQL and has many years of experience programming web applications.

As is appropriate for a web standard, the story of HTML5 starts with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), or more precisely, with the W3C Workshop on Web Applications and Compound Documents in June 2004. But rather unusually, the development of HTML5 initially took place outside of the W3C, because the W3C was not at all thrilled with the idea of HTML5 to start with. What had happened?

In a joint position paper, Mozilla and Opera demanded that the W3C should ensure the continued development of HTML, DOM, and CSS as the basis of web applications of the future. Given the fact that the W3C had already sidelined HTML4 six years before and had instead elected to back XHTML, XForms, SVG, and SMIL, it was hardly surprising that this suggestion was rejected. The result was very close, with 8 votes in favor and 11 votes against, but the decision still had far-reaching consequences. In the following years, the development of HTML5 was to take place in direct competition with the W3C.