So….can we truly use HTML5 yet?

[Luminated]

I’ve been searching this online and I can’t seem to find a definitive answer (mostly surrounding IE7/8…don’t care about 6 anymore).

Can we use HTML5 safely? Does IE8 support it without the use of javascript? What about IE7? And furthermore, what will happen to browsers that don’t recognize the new tags like <header> and <footer>? :?:

[Luminated]

Really? Nobody knows this yet? :shock:

[Luminated]

Muchos, muchos gracias apostrophe.

I should have known better than to just see what Jeffery Zeldman was up to. ;)

[Chris Coyier]

You really can. Just start using the doctype and elements! The one little catch is you have to use some JavaScript to get older browsers to allow you to style those elements with CSS:

http://code.google.com/p/html5shiv/

[greg.mcausland]

how does google feel about the new tags in terms of rankings

[greg.mcausland]

thats a good point, i mean its ultimately only divs and indescript things being replaced,

very turned on by HTML5 at least the core basic new tags seems like the are supported, gonna check out those links you posted earlier.. I think they were down at the time, or my internet was just doing what it does best (not working)

cheers

[brianatlarge]

I was about to make a similar post, but decided to bump this back up.

Is anyone using HTML5 on a regular basis, and if so, have you discovered any issues? I’m planning on switching from XHTML 1.0 strict to HTML5 and was just wondering if there was anything I need to keep in mind as far as cross-browser compatibility / implementing jQuery stuff / PHP includes, etc…

[JamesDuncombe]

I’ve been using it over at my site and it’s been fine. I know the guys at Carsonified (http://carsonified.com/) use it and many more do too.

AFAIK most of the browsers out there already support the doctype. It’s the HTML5 specific elements that some browsers have problems with. IE can’t work out things like <header>, <nav>, <article>, <footer> etc without JavaScript being involved. With FF, Safari/Chrome and Opera you can do:

Code:

header, nav, article, footer { display: block; }

…which then turns those elements into block elements. I’ve made a demo page here (http://www.jamesduncombe.com/html5/) which demo’s CSS3 and HTML5 (it works in Safai/Chrome and FF). If you have a look at the source it will show you the elements I used. The HTML is clean but the CSS is very messy at the moment (I had a bet with someone about keeping it tiny!).

Hope that helps,

James

[davesgonebananas]

The thing to remember is that HTML5 isn’t ratified yet. What does this mean for you? Well if you produce an XHTML 1.0 compliant website it will remain compliant forever. This is important if you are doing client facing work as opposed to internal projects or sites that are updated frequently (like the Google homepage). I like to validate my sites before I hand them over to a client and know it’s not going to break at some point in the future. Bear in mind that any HTML5 sites that you produce today may end up invalid once the standard has been finalised.

Another point to consider is whether you need any of the new HTML5 features (i.e. Canvas, forms, offline storage, etc). If not then what is your reason for switching – is it just that it’s the "cool" thing to do? Renaming <div> to <content> is nice, but… it’s just not enough of a win for me at the moment.

Finally, I urge you to consider multi-platform support. HTML5 doesn’t degrade gracefully, since it relies on Javascript in some browsers and it isn’t supported at all on some platforms. Not saying this is should be a definite reason not to use it, but I much prefer progressive enhancement.

TLDR:
Unless you need one or more of the new features, it’s not time for HTML5 yet. Feel free to experiment, and go ahead if you absolutely must be in the "cool" crowd.

[soap]

HTML5 ftw.

[Arvid]

Yeah, HTML 5 is awesome and should be used by everyone, css 3 aswell IMO. Recently there was a poll on the subject and I voted that I did not use html on every site, but that’s mainly because my clients don’t want to use Html 5 on their sites.

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