Help Keep Accessibility and Semantics in HTML

If you think accessibility and semantics are important and should be improved in the next version of HTML, you need to act.

Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML

How to Prevent HTML Tables from Becoming Too Wide

The layout model of tables differ from that of block level elements in that they will normally expand beyond their specified width to make their contents fit. At first that may sound like a good thing – and it often is – but it makes it possible for oversized content to make text unreadable or completely break a site’s layout, especially in Internet Explorer.

Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Web Design>Document Design>HTML

Guidelines for Creating Better Markup

I’ve mentioned several times here that I feel writing markup (or any other code, for that matter) is a craft. I take pride in writing as lean and clean code as possible. From the looks of things there aren’t a whole lot of other Web professionals that feel that way, but we do exist.

Johansson, Roger. 456 Berea Street (2007). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML

Improve Your Forms Using HTML 5!

HTML hasn't really been updated since HTML version 4 was released back in 1998. However, the WHATWG community has been working on HTML since 2004 and this will hopefully result in some much needed improvements. This article shows some of the new functionality of the proposed form chapter of HTML5: Web Forms 2.

Van Kesteren, Anne. Opera (2008). Articles>Web Design>Forms>HTML5

Free Your Embedded Data With SearchMonkey

Arguing for web standards and semantically clean and rich websites is an uphill battle. For years we had to deal with browsers that needed us to mess around with HTML just to display a document in several columns and the visual outcome was much more important than the structure.

Heilmann, Christian. Digital Web Magazine (2008). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML

HTML, the Foundation of the Web

HTML is hot again. Some time ago the HTML5 promo machine got up to speed, causing a little mini-fuss. In a parallel universe, others are still putting a lot of time and effort into the development of xHTML2. This (public) renewal of interest in HTML caused plenty of discussion, revealing several blank spots in the general knowledge of HTML. This article will hopefully plug one of the most notorious holes shut.

Matthijs, Niels. Web Page Design for Designers (2008). Design>Web Design>HTML>HTML5

CSS Speech Bubbles

Easy to customize speech bubbles coded in valid XHTML and CSS.

Mayo, Will. WillMayo.com (2008). Design>Web Design>HTML>CSS

What’s the Difference Between HTML and XHTML?

If you’ve mastered HTML, you’re 90% of the way towards using XHTML. They’re actually very much the same thing—tag-based markup languages used to display Web pages. The difference is only seen by the people creating the pages (Web designers, programmers, etc.) and focuses on “forgivability”— HTML allows for some ugly code (mixed case tags like , improperly nested elements, and unclosed tags), while XHTML does not. If you write HTML, it’s probably a good idea to start using XHTML practices anyway. It will take 5 minutes to learn, and it’s just a better way of doing things.

Jason, Chris. ChrisJason.com (2006). Articles>Web Design>HTML>XHTML

Death of a Meta Tag

The value of adding meta keywords tags to pages seems little worth the time. In my opinion, the meta keywords tag is dead, dead, dead. Like Andrew, I say good riddance!

Sullivan, Danny. ClickZ (2002). Articles>Web Design>HTML>Metadata

Refactor to Improve Code Design

Refactoring restructures your code into a more simplified or efficient form in a disciplined way. Refactoring software code improves its internal structure without changing external functionality for more efficient execution, faster download speed, and easier updates.

Website Optimization (2008). Articles>Web Design>HTML>Compression

Semantics in HTML 5

HTML 5, the W3C’s recently redoubled effort to shape the next generation of HTML, has, over the last year or so, taken on considerable momentum. It is an enormous project, covering not simply the structure of HTML, but also parsing models, error-handling models, the DOM, algorithms for resource fetching, media content, 2D drawing, data templating, security models, page loading models, client-side data storage, and more. There are also revisions to the structure, syntax, and semantics of HTML.

Allsopp, John. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>HTML5

When Can I Use...

Compatibility tables for features in HTML5, CSS3, SVG and other upcoming web technologies in the most popular web browsers.

Deveria (2009). Reference>Web Design>Standards>HTML5

Common Ideas Between HTML and XHTML

As of this writing, HTML and XHTML are both being used to create Web sites. But there are multiple versions of each, with specific changes and ideas attached. The following table shows the current W3C HTML and XHTML recommendations of note.

Web Standards Project (2004). Articles>Web Design>HTML>XHTML

HTML Versus XHTML: Which Should We Use, and Why?

HTML 4.01 is as valuable as XHTML 1.0 in a daily usage. The syntax proposed by XHTML 1.0 has several important benefits. The weight of these benefits has to be evaluated in the context of your project: Use the right tool for the right job. For a Web designer, starting to use XHTML 1.0 will be helpful in some circumstances and will certainly help you to smoothly negotiate the future. XHTML 1.0 gives a wonderful opportunity to learn about XML languages and their possibilities without having to learn new semantics because you’re working with familiar tags and attributes.

Web Standards Project (2005). Articles>Web Design>HTML>XHTML

HTML No Longer Needed

Much in the same way that Microsoft Word and PageMaker made desktop publishing more widely available and eliminated the need for tagging to achieve formatting, blogs and wikis are doing the same for the web. You can use WordPress to create an entire web site without knowing or using HTML. Editme.com is providing web site services using wiki technologies. These tools help users publish content with less knowledge of the underlying tagging.

Answers for All (2009). Articles>Content Management>Web Design>HTML

Bookmark (Anchor) Linking Tip

You can link to any tag within the page by quoting its ID. For example, if you have a paragraph with an ID of "intro", then you can link directly to that point without having to insert a bookmark.

Self, Tony. HyperWrite (2007). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>HTML

HTML 5 Doctor

html5doctor is a collaboration between, Rich Clark, Bruce Lawson, Jack Osborne, Mike Robinson, Remy Sharp and Tom Leadbetter. The site came about following a HTML5 meetup after the Future of Web Design conference in London (2009). We decided that there wasn’t a resource that catered for the people who wished to find out more about implementing HTML5 and how to go about it, so we thought we’d better build one. We will publish articles relating to HTML5 and it’s semantics and how to use them, here and now.

HTML 5 Doctor. Resources>Web Design>Standards>HTML5

The 'Video' Element

The 'video' element is brand new in HTML 5 and allows you to, get this, play a movie in your website! The data of this element is supposed to be video but it might also have audio or images associated with it. Of course, this will only work in a few browsers: Safari 3.1+, Firefox 3.5+, and latest builds of Opera (oh, and potentially the next release of Chrome).

HTML 5 Doctor (2009). Articles>Web Design>Multimedia>HTML5

Understanding 'aside'

HTML 5 offers a new element to mark additional information that can enhance an article but isn’t necessarily key to understanding it. However, in the interpretation of 'aside' there lies confusion as to how it can be used, and with that there is demand for the Doctor to step up and clear the air. In this article I will look at what 'aside' was created for, including sample uses and how not to use this useful, misunderstood element.

HTML 5 Doctor (2009). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML5

The 'header' Element

Recently, we have seen a growing interest in HTML 5 and it’s adoption by web professionals. Within the HTML 5 specfication we can see that there have been a significant number of new tags added, one of these the

Yes, You Can Use HTML 5 Today!

The blogosphere was jerked into excitement when Google gave a sneak preview of its new service, Google Wave. Only the select few have an account, but there’s an 80-minute video about it on YouTube for the rest of us. The service is an HTML 5 app, and so HTML 5 has gone from being too far away to care about to today’s hot topic.

Lawson, Bruce. SitePoint (2009). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML5

HTML 5: Now or Never?

Here at SitePoint, we have started thinking about HTML 5, and whether or not the time is right to publish a book about it. To help us decide, we asked a number of web luminaries what they thought. Their answers were both varied and interesting. Take a look and decide for yourself: is it time you started learning about HTML 5?

Yank, Kevin. SitePoint (2009). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML5

HTML Five

This site is a project to learn, discuss and promote HTML 5.

HTML Five. Resources>Web Design>Standards>HTML5

A Whole Lotta HTML5 Love

With the flurry of HTML5 tweets this past month, I felt it was somewhat easier to park some of them in a blog post. Retweeting was adding to the confusion for a non-HTML5 person like me.

STC AccessAbility SIG (2009). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML5

Misunderstanding Markup: XHTML 2/HTML 5 Comic Strip

Now that the development of XHTML 2 is discontinued, should we stick to XHTML 1.0 or move forward to HTML 5 or better prefer the old HTML 4? Let’s set things straight once and for all. In this post we are trying to clear up the confusion, explain what is what and describe what markup language you can use for your web-sites.

Colbow, Brad. Smashing (2009). Articles>Web Design>Standards>HTML5