Web designers will not like it but Web developers will see it as inevitable – the new emerging HTML5 standard is really the recognition that Web 2.0 development trends have taken us to DHTML-Dynamic HTML as the way to design and program Web applications. But DHTML means designers and developers will require solid knowledge not only of HTML and CSS but also JavaScript, DOM, XML and host of Web integration technologies. Go see the HTML5 Core document at the W3C standards site – and look there for the broad outline. But also here for the core references of information and methods HTML5 adepts will have to know.
HTML5’s move from design to development is palpable and just reflects the fact that dynamic web sites that can quickly change with tabs, carousels, video and dynamic content capture browser eyeballs. But another factor, self customization, where users at websites can save their favorites, layout and edit their ‘MyWorkspace’ including coloring and styling are also very popular. These type of capabilities imply a website that is “smart” with pre-programmed widgets and event driven routines prepared to be at the beck and call of all a user’s customizing desires.
If you look at the list of references for Core HTML5 one gets a strong idea of whats behind the design of the HTML5 standard:
[ABOUT]- The ‘about’ URI scheme, J. Holsten, L. Hunt. IETF, August 2009.
[BCP47]- Tags for Identifying Languages; Matching of Language Tags, A. Phillips, M. Davis. IETF, September 2006.
[COMPUTABLE]- (Non-normative) On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem, A. Turing. In Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, series 2, volume 42, pages 230-265. London Mathematical Society, 1937. Retrieved on 2007-03-03.
[COOKIES]- HTTP State Management Mechanism, A. Barth. IETF, August 2009.
[CSS]- Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 Revision 1, B. Bos, T. Çelik, I. Hickson, H. Lie. W3C, April 2009.
[CSSCOLOR]- CSS Color Module Level 3, T. Çelik, C. Lilley, L. Baron. W3C, August 2008.
[DOMCORE]- Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Core Specification, A. Le Hors, P. Le Hegaret, L. Wood, G. Nicol, J. Robie, M. Champion, S. Byrnes. W3C, April 2004.
[DOMEVENTS]- Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Events Specification, D. Schepers. W3C, July 2009.
[DOMRANGE]- Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Traversal and Range Specification, J. Kesselman, J. Robie, M. Champion, P. Sharpe, V. Apparao, L. Wood. W3C, November 2000.
[DOMVIEWS]- Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Views Specification, A. Le Hors, L. Cable. W3C, November 2000.
[ECMA262]- ECMAScript Language Specification. ECMA, December 1999.
[GREGORIAN]- (Non-normative) Inter Gravissimas, A. Lilius, C. Clavius. Gregory XIII Papal Bulls, February 1582.
[HTML5INTRO]- HTML5 Introduction, I. Hickson, D. Hyatt. W3C, January 2010.
[HTTP]- Hypertext Transfer Protocol — HTTP/1.1, R. Fielding, J. Gettys, J. Mogul, H. Frystyk, L. Masinter, P. Leach, T. Berners-Lee. IETF, June 1999.
[IANACHARSET]- Character Sets. IANA, May 2007.
[ISO8601]- ISO8601: Data elements and interchange formats — Information interchange — Representation of dates and times. ISO, December 2004.
[JSURL]- The ‘javascript’ resource identifier scheme, B. Höhrmann. IETF, November 2006.
[MAILTO]- The mailto URL scheme, P. Hoffman, L. Masinter, J. Zawinski. IETF, July 1998.
[MIMESNIFF]- Content-Type Processing Model, A. Barth, I. Hickson. IETF, May 2009.
[MQ]- Media Queries, H. Lie, T. Çelik, D. Glazman, A. van Kesteren. W3C, July 2009.
[NPAPI]- (Non-normative) Gecko Plugin API Reference. Mozilla, November 2008.
[OPENSEARCH]- Autodiscovery in HTML/XHTML. In OpenSearch 1.1 Draft 4, Section 4.6.2. OpenSearch.org.
[ORIGIN]- The HTTP Origin Header, A. Barth, C. Jackson, I. Hickson. IETF, September 2009.
[PINGBACK]- Pingback 1.0, S. Langridge, I. Hickson. January 2007.
[PROGRESS]- Progress Events, C. McCathieNevile. W3C, March 2009.
[PSL]- Public Suffix List. Mozilla Foundation.
[RFC1345]- Character Mnemonics and Character Sets, K. Simonsen. IETF, June 1992.
[RFC1494]- (Non-normative) Equivalences between 1988 X.400 and RFC-822 Message Bodies, H. Alvestrand, S. Thompson. IETF, August 1993.
[RFC2046]- Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part Two: Media Types, N. Freed, N. Borenstein. IETF, November 1996.
[RFC2119]- Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels, S. Bradner. IETF, March 1997.
[RFC2483]- URI Resolution Services Necessary for URN Resolution, M. Mealling, R. Daniel. IETF, January 1999.
[RFC2646]- The Text/Plain Format Parameter, R. Gellens. IETF, August 1999.
[RFC2806]- (Non-normative) URLs for Telephone Calls, A. Vaha-Sipila. IETF, April 2000.
[RFC3023]- XML Media Types, M. Murata, S. St. Laurent, D. Kohn. IETF, January 2001.
[RFC3490]- Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA), P. Faltstrom, P. Hoffman, A. Costello. IETF, March 2003.
[RFC3986]- Uniform Resource Identifier (URI): Generic Syntax, T. Berners-Lee, R. Fielding, L. Masinter. IETF, January 2005.
[RFC3987]- Internationalized Resource Identifiers (IRIs), M. Dürst, M. Suignard. IETF, January 2005.
[RFC4329]- (Non-normative) Scripting Media Types, B. Höhrmann. IETF, April 2006.
[SELECTORS]- Selectors, T. Çelik, E. Etemad, D. Glazman, I. Hickson, P. Linss, J. Williams. W3C, March 2009.
[SRGB]- IEC 61966-2-1: Multimedia systems and equipment — Colour measurement and management — Part 2-1: Colour management — Default RGB colour space — sRGB. IEC, October 1999.
[UNICODE]- The Unicode Standard. Unicode Consortium, 2007.
[WEBADDRESSES]- Web addresses in HTML5, D. Connolly, C. Sperberg-McQueen. March 2009.
[WEBIDL]- Web IDL, C. McCormack. W3C, July 2009.
[WHATWGWIKI]- The WHATWG Wiki. WHATWG.
[WEBWORKERS]- Web Workers, I. Hickson. W3C, September 2009.
[XHR]- XMLHttpRequest, A. van Kesteren. W3C, June 2009.
[XML]- Extensible Markup Language, T. Bray, J. Paoli, C. Sperberg-McQueen, E. Maler, F. Yergeau. W3C, November 2008.
[XMLNS]- Namespaces in XML, T. Bray, D. Hollander, A. Layman, R. Tobin. W3C, August 2006.
This list gives a good idea of not only what technologies have been considered but also which ones are likely out of the standard. Thus E4X and Gecko, because they are non-normative, are likely considered but are outside the standard – not good for E4X.
Designers will be looking for HTML5 Design Aids
The consequences of HTML5 going strongly programmatic is that Web designers will be looking for aid and help navigating the new standard to get the most out of it. Actually, designers are already looking and products like Xara Web Designer 6 and EXTjs Designer are filling some of the need. As well there has been a big rise in Photoshop to HTML software and design-to-code agencies. But the simple fact is that major Web Design software like Dreamweaver 5, Eclipse, Netbeans, Aptana Studio and many others have a)failed to deliver a Visual IDE for drag and drop Web Design+Coding and b)are even tardy on delivering smart HTML5 editors with Code Completion and Intellisense. So while Apple and Google tell Web Designers and Developers to go out and use HTML5, the hard reality is that there is an enormous learning curve and the supporting software is largely at the level of NotePad++ and TextEdit.