Webstylist.dk

I have read through the HTML 5 document, and stumbled upon a lot of nice features.

So here is my thoughts in them.

SEO and statistic updates

Its easy to see that with the new elements (section, header, footer, nav, article, aside) that they had crawlers on their mind. Using these new elements will make it far more easier for crawlers to find the relevant information about a page. It will be interesting to see how many will use these elements. They are only meta elements and will probably do nothing for the end user.

With the new ping attribute and anchor tags, its easier to handle statistic collection. You can have the href pointing to the relevant page, and have the ping pointing to a statistic collection page.

Form elements

I really like what they did with the form elements. All validation have been moved from javascript/ajax/server side, to the browser. With new input types like data, email, number, range and url its way easier to create a form quickly. And the new required attribute is also very nice.

Autofocus is also a new nice attribute. Thats 1 less javascript function needed in the onload event. The browser just focus on the form element with this attribute.

When can we expect to use HTML5?

Well, the specifications are still in working draft form, so it needs to be finish first. Then all the major browsers have to implement it. And last the users have to upgrade to these browsers. And we all know the last step is the most difficult step So we are talking years here.

Read more about it:

HTML 5 specification

Different between HTML4 and HTML5

A problem frequently met, is centered design jumping in Firefox. Its caused by the browsers default scrollbar behavior. The scrollbar in Firefox is only shown, if its needed.

So in a centered design, if you have a page with no scrolling linking to another page with scrolling, you will see the page jumping. This is caused by the scrollbar appearing and disappearing, making the viewport 18 pixel slimmer.

A way to avoid this, is to show the scrolbar at all times, with this CSS:

html {
overflow-y: scroll;
}

Of course you can reverse this, and have the "scrollbar on demand" feature in IE also:

html {
overflow-y: auto;
}

PNG is a image format, supported by all modern browsers. PNG is short for Portable Network Graphics.

PNG image format brings a lot to the table.

• Up to 24 bit color palette.
• Lossless data compression.
• Many levels of transparency

(more...)

The creators of SWFFix, have finally finished their newest flash integration software, SWObject 2.0.

Its a small javascript tool, that embeds flash the right way. Its cross browser compliant, and supports alternative content.

With alternative content support, you can feed search engines with indexable content. Its a great way of getting over the problem, that search engines can't read flash.

View their blog

Read more about SWFObject 2.0

2. September 2008

Google can now index flash files, and they are working on a way to index flash included with swfobject

Read more on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog