HTML.co.uk

Since the last millennium HTML 5 has introduced new elements to HTML. Aside, figure and section are the new structural elements. Time, meter and progress are the new inline elements. Video and audio are the new embedding elements. Details, data grid and command are the new interactive elements.

In 1999 the development of HTML had stopped with HTML4. The world wide website consortium’s (w3c) changed its focus in the underlying syntax of HTML to XML (extensible markup language) from standard generalized markup language(SGML) and it also focused on languages like Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG),X Forms and MathML. Browser features like tabs and RSS readers were focused by browser vendors. The languages like CSS and JavaScript came in handy to the web designers to build their own applications on top of the existing frame work using Asynchronous XML (Ajax) + JavaScript, but in the next eight years HTML grew itself very hardly.

Recently the 3 browser vendor major’s – Apple, Opera and Mozilla foundation came together as the web hypertext application technology working group(whatwg) to develop the classic version of HTML to an updated and upgraded version. With Same members, w3c started developing its own upgraded version of HTML taking note of the developments of the three major browser vendors. These two upgraded versions are likely to be merged, but many details are left to be argued, the next version of HTML outlines is becoming clear.

HTML5 the new version of HTML known usually, though it goes under the name web application1.0, it is recognizable by a web designer frozen in the year 1999 and today thawed. It includes no namespaces and schemas. Elements need not be closed. Errors will be forgiven by browsers. Desk is still a desk and TV is still a TV.

At the same moment some new and confusing elements would encountered by the unfrozen caveman Web designer. Now HTML includes new elements like section, header, footer, and nav with old elements like div.But now it includes audio and video and also em,code and strong are still present with meter, time, and m. img and embed which are continued to be used. Closer inspection by caveman designer however would reveal that all these elements are not different. Back in 1999 the designer might have needed these things, but wasn’t developed. The designer can understand all these new elements by simple analogy where he might have learned earlier. Than Ajax or CSS it is lot easier to learn.

At last, laptop running on windows 98 with 300 MHz was fired by caveman which was frozen way back in 1999, they might have astonished to know that the display of the new pages are fine in Netscape 4 and Windows® Internet Explorer® 5. Page still displays and all the contents are present, and the browser does anything or wouldn’t recognize with new elements.

It’s not a happy feature, HTML was designed explicitly to degrade browsers gracefully that won’t support it. The reason behind this is simple, as we all are cave people. Browsers now have XmlHttpRequest, tabs and CSS, but in 1999 their renderers of HTML stuck. Without accounting the installed base, web cannot move forward and HTML5 understands it.

Microformats can be described as the set of open data formats which have been designed first for human and then for the machines and are truly based on the existing and widely accepted standards. Using these widely accepted standards there is an option of encoding still further semantics in the HTML web pages. This ultimately helps in giving a good meaning to your web pages and allows your HTML elements to be mashed up, consumed and remixed. For example if you add up any semantics HTML to describe the upcoming event then properties such as the event dates can easily be extracted and used by other software and services.

It’s not new including more semantic information directly into the HTML but the main idea behind the use of microformats is to include more classes, code libraries, documentation and tools to generate significant momentum. And this idea or concept is taking the form of reality. Use of microformats is not at all complex instead it is quite a simple concept. Microformats are used to publish majorly two kinds of data, firstly the ones related to events and secondly to people.

Microformats have been designed specifically to allow more meaning and value to be leveraged out of the information that has been published. The main reason for the success of microformats is that you do not need to change your published content completely. Instead you just need to make slight changes or modifications in your HTML.

You can make good use of microformats for publishing your profile. There would be numerous copies of your user profiles that would be existing on the web. Whenever you sign up any website such as twitter you have to add all the similar type of information which mainly includes email name, nickname, URL and many other details. By using microformats you can actually make the information much more useful. Don’t you think so it would be great to actually import your user information from one website to many other applications without actually copying or pasting the text? This will actually save you a lot of trouble and hassle as your profile can now be aggregated across the web thereby creating your internet wide profile.

For this purpose specifically hCard is a special microformat that has been developed which has been modeled on the vcard standard. Infact its quite surprising that the most commonly known application of the address book has been making importing and exporting vcards for quite some time now. Even the iPhones are capable of transporting contact details around in a vcard. And anything that is capable of reading of a vcard is also capable of reading the hcard but definitely with certain help and assistance.

Organizations, places and people can be marked up using hCard. Name is the only mandatory property of hCard that is required and rest everything is optional. This is very important point because it is an important principal of the microformats to not to change the format or the way the people have actually published. Therefore microformats are quite strong and vibrant and can be used for transforming the plain text content from your website to meaningful packets of information which can be either consumed in some ways or remixed.