HTML5 for Web Designers: Second Edition

By Jeremy Keith

HTML5 isn't as confusing as it once was, but it still isn't straightforward. It's an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, change in the ongoing story of markup-and if you're currently creating websites with any version of HTML, you're already using HTML5. Harness the power of this essential evolving spec with help from Jeremy Keith and Rache

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jeremy Keith
• Release date: Nov 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781952616891

Jeremy Keith

Jeremy Keith lives in Brighton, England where he makes websites with the splendid design agency Clearleft. You may know him from such books as DOM Scripting, Bulletproof Ajax, and Resilient Web Design. Hailing from Erin's green shores, Jeremy maintains his link to Irish traditional music running the community site The Session. He also indulges a darker side of his bouzouki-playing in the band Salter Cane. Jeremy spends most of his time goofing off on the internet, documenting his time-wasting on adactio.com, where he has been writing for over fifteen years.

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Copyright © 2016 Jeremy Keith and Rachel Andrew

First edition published 2010

All rights reserved

Publisher: Jeffrey Zeldman

Designer: Jason Santa Maria

Executive Director: Katel LeDû

Editor: Lisa Maria Martin

Proofreader: Caren Litherland

Compositor: Rob Weychert

Ebook Producer: Ron Bilodeau

Editor, first edition: Mandy Brown

Technical Editor, first edition: Ethan Marcotte

Copyeditor, first edition: Krista Stevens

Compositor, first edition: Neil Egan

ISBN: 978-1-9375572-5-6

A Book Apart

New York, New York

http://abookapart.com

TABLE OF CONTENTS

More From A Book Apart

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1. A Brief History Of Markup

Chapter 2. The Design Of Html5

Chapter 3. Rich Media

Chapter 4. Web Forms 2.0

Chapter 5. Semantics

Chapter 6. Using Html5 Today

Resources

References

Index

About A Book Apart

About the Authors

FOREWORD

WELCOME TO

the second edition of HTML5 for Web Designers, the book that launched a thousand sites—or apps, if you prefer. It is also the book whose first edition launched our little craft publishing house. And its new edition comes to you when it is needed most, on a web riven by conflicting visions.

For some folks, the web today is what it has always been: namely, the most accessible medium ever devised for sharing content. For others, including the heads of powerful tech companies, the web is a platform for building JavaScript-powered applications whose purpose is to disrupt every industry on earth, chiefly for the benefit of investors.

Adherents of both camps are equally passionate—and both swear by HTML5, which was designed to create both kinds of web. HTML5 has given us a web both more powerful and more divided.

So much has changed over the past five years, it’s hard to remember that many businesses were still betting on Flash as recently as 2009, and still building sites and applications exclusively for the desktop browser. Then, in 2010, Steve Jobs famously declared that his iPhone would not support Flash. Flash was dead, Steve said. HTML5 was the future. A hundred thousand designers, developers, and site owners suddenly asked themselves, HTML wha—? The next day, our little book came out, which was good timing for sales, but even better for the industry. And there are still no better guides to the new markup language than Jeremy Keith and Rachel Andrew.

In this book, you will learn what HTML5 is, why it came to be, and how to use it to create sites and applications as powerful as anything you can imagine. Forms, elements, semantics, scripting? It’s all here, guided by a set of principles as straightforward as they are noble—principles that deliver sophisticated web interactivity while remaining true to Tim Berners-Lee’s twenty-five-year-old vision of an open, accessible web that works for all. This book spells out a philosophy that will deepen not only the usability of your projects, but their humanism as well.

HTML5 for Web Designers is a book about HTML like Elements of Style is a book about commas. It's a book founded on solid design principles, and forged at the cutting edge of twenty-first century multidevice design and development. Jeremy Keith and Rachel Andrew never, for one second, forget what moment of web design history we are in, and how much depends upon our ever bearing in mind not only our users in the wealthiest countries, but also the least of these. I know, admire, and continually learn from the depths of the authors’ belief in humanity and HTML. You will, too.

—Jeffrey Zeldman

INTRODUCTION

THE INITIAL VERSION

of this book was published in 2010 when HTML5 was something developers were tentatively starting to use, despite concerns about problems with old browsers and new semantic elements. Today, it is rare to see someone starting a new site with anything other than an HTML5 doctype; the use of new HTML5 elements is commonplace. A whole generation of web designers is emerging that has only ever used HTML5.

When I was asked to work on an update of the book, I was somewhat nervous about the mixing of two voices and two perspectives. This is an opinionated book, and I wanted to approach this rewrite with a light touch—updating things that have changed, but maintaining the overall point of view. Thankfully, in most places, Jeremy’s thoughts and mine converge, so I’ve managed to avoid any arguments between two authors separated by five years!

In fact, I’ve been struck by how much has remained unchanged in that time. One of the arguments against HTML5 as a living standard is that this could make the language too fluid, ever-changing, something that we are constantly battling to keep up with. There have been tweaks to how we should use certain elements, and new features have been added, but, as it turns out, the advice in the first edition still mostly holds true today.

My update brings to the book some of the new features of HTML5, as well as those which had little support at the time of the first edition. We now have important elements such as picture, and accessibility issues caused by features like canvas have been addressed. I hope that my work has enhanced this short book, and will give it another few years of helping web designers better use HTML5.

—Rachel Andrew

Chapter 1. A Brief History Of Markup

HTML IS THE

unifying language of the World Wide Web. Using just the simple tags it contains, the human race has created an astoundingly diverse network of hyperlinked documents, from Amazon, eBay, and Wikipedia, to personal blogs and websites dedicated to cats that look like Hitler.

HTML5 is the latest iteration of this lingua franca. While it is the most ambitious change to our common tongue, this isn’t the first time that HTML has