Cameron Laird's personal notes on HTML5

I've published several articles on HTML5 myself, including:

• How to convert Flash to HTML5 with Swiffy
• "Server-side events a good choice for datacenter monitors",
• "HTML5 vs native an important, but not obvious, choice",
• "Three main choices for advanced communications in HTML5", a DZone Big Link
• "HTML5 realities: practical, constrained, and promising"
• "Enhance Your Application Inexpensively With Microformats"
• "HTML5 or Native?" About a week after I wrote this, incidentally, I read Art Wittmann's "There's No App ...", first published almost seven months earlier. We both use some of the same language. This is a coincidence. Incidentally, I still don't understand Wittmann's point about notifications, or I don't agree with what I do understand about it.
• "What supply-chain decision-makers ought to know about HTML5"
• "Now Is The Time For Your Website To Adopt 'Microformats'"
• "Four reasons to jump to HTML5", which comes with its own slideshow called "5 sites that get HTML5"
• "Unleash the Power of Hardware-Accelerated HTML5 Canvas" (incidentally, Andy Patrizio writes on closely-related points in "Making the most of GPU acceleration ...");
• "Concise and Comprehensive: an HTML5-focused interview with Authors Klaus Foerster and Bernd Oeggl";
• "Experiment with the Latest HTML5 Technologies";
• "The Dangers of HTML5: WebSockets and Stable Standards";
• "6 Reasons Why HTML5 is More than Just Another Web Toolkit";
• "How HTML5 Will Change your Software Development and Purchasing";
• "HTML5 Sandboxes for Safety";
• "HTML5: The tipping point is with developers, not browsers";
• "New applications hint at Web's graphic potential";
• [several more to come in 2013] [also many of my broader Web pieces touch on HTML5 technologies]

It's been interesting to see in 2011-2012 how many of my themes are showing up in Microsoft-supported publications, including:

• It's time now to move to HTML5;
• "... HTML5 is a collection of technologies rather than a monolithic block ..." (from an eminently-practical article for all developers, and certainly not just the ASP.NET specialists to which it's apparently targeted);
• Use Modernizr;
• Declarations do beat procedure;
• CSS3 matters;
• HTML5 is important for mobile development;
• ...

Other noteworthy HTML5-related pages:

• "HTML5 differences from HTML4"
• Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into HTML5 is rewarding. While one could learn HTML5 without it, you're almost certainly better off to accept its help. The chapter on "Web Forms" is representative;
• "Build Your Business Website" and "HTML for Beginners" have been recommended to me (by SL and anonymous). They certainly cover the basics.
• Bruce Eckel's Python-based WebSockets: A Glimpse of the Future"
• Brett McLaughlin's What Is HTML5? is a DRM-free ebook which correctly ruminates on HTML5 as a natural updating of markup-and-linking to the objects and idioms that have proved of interest in the two decades since the Web began. This is worthwhile reading;
• "The Arrival of HTML5" was an early, sophisticated (if unevenly edited) presentation of HTML5 features;
• HTML5 Rocks advocates. Plenty of work has gone into it; it holds much of value;
• [Explain HTML5Labs]
• I have plans to write about "HTML5 as an alternative to PDF on the mobile platform"
• "HTML5 for games" analyzes the market as much as the technology;
• Mashable offers seductive images to argue "How JavaScript & HTML5 Are Remaking the Web";
• The W3C's Overview;
• "An implausibly illustrated introduction to HTML5 Web Workers";
• "The HTML5 Experiments of Hakim El Hattab";
• "Untangle" is a delightful little geometric game;
• graphic calculator;
• "How to develop a HTML5 Image Uploader" concentrates on JavaScript by a front-line coder;
• "Styling the HTML5 Meter" gives practical advice;
• The W3C offers a logo and other paraphernalia. Among the true statements included in the announcement: HTML5 is simultaneously unstable and ready, and also multi-faceted;
• advocacy from Mashable;
• HTML5 Tutorial Sites;
• In "Understanding The Open Web Stack", Molly Holzschlag gives, among other things, a correct diagram that shows how HTML5 is, technically, only one player in a considerably larger team;
• "How Web Security Will Change With HTML5";
• "Five Facts CIOs Must Know About HTML5";
• This piece on HTML5 adoption and applicability adds little, I think. While it's superficially pleasant to hear that Gartner is behind the times, and HTML5 will prosper more than some believe, it's presented at the level of punditry. The comments are much the same. There's little distinction between the factual and speculative here; this is not to my taste.
• ...

http://twitter.com/Phaseit offers tips and commentary on HTML5 at least weekly.

I expect Schema.org to be hugely important. I'll write more about it in 2012.

Scott Fulton thinks deeply, as is his wont, about HTML5's essence (hint: don't expect today's CMSs or ECMSs to "get it").

An undertold story: mobile needs leaner sites, and HTML5 is part of the solution. Others write about "mobile first" [perhaps I'll provide references; I rant a bit in an article nominally about "enforced obsolescence"]. Even an article like "Improving the Mobile Experience with HTML5" doesn't mention at all HTML5's potential to make thriftier use of bandwidth. On yet another hand, advertisers could move their power-and-bandwidth-robbing trickiness from Flash to HTML5, and where would that leave us?