Internet standards for HTML

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is standardizing over 100 specifications for the open web, in at least 13 working groups. The CSS Working Group alone is in charge of 50 specifications. This does not include work on Unicode, HTTP and TLS.

New tag proposal.  Not really.

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from

I was waiting to post this until the debate between W3C and WHATWG about the status of HTML5 scope was resolved. However, I have waited since February 2011. Consensus is that HTML5 is being inappropriately used as a catch-all for every standard supported by modern browsers. Modern browsers actually include much more: CSS3 styling, WOFF (web fonts), semantic web elements such as microformats, 3-D graphics including SVG, and performance enhancements. HTML5 tags are merely one part of semantic web support. As a result, terminology was modified by WHATWG. HTML is the new HTML5. 

YouTube copyright block icon

This is what YouTube returns if a video is blocked due to copyright issues. It was implemented as part of the new HTML5 version of the YouTube video player.

The icon is so sweet and endearing that I almost forget to be irritated because I wasn’t allowed to watch the video!

“This video contains content from MGM, who has blocked it on copyright grounds. Sorry about that.”

via www.youtube.com

UPDATE: Perhaps I should change that back to HTML in light of this: Meet HTML, the spec formerly known as HTML5.

Periodic Table of the Elements

Enjoy Josh Duck’s delightful Periodic Table of HTML5 elements!

Each of the 104 107 elements of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) working draft of HTML5 are present. There is even a combined lanthanide-and-actinide series insert. Josh refers to it as the “Embedding content” section. I annotated a small partial screen shot.

Rare earth HTML5 elements

The dusty rose-colored block includes some of the most novel and appealing of the elements that differentiate HTML5 from HTML4: map, canvas and video.

Muro Drawing Application from DeviantArt

I saw a Twitter entry from Chris Messina about this a few days ago. Pardon me, he’s trademarked his name, let me try this: chrismessina™ .  Here is the link to the Muro drawing application http://muro.deviantart.com/, and the Ultimate Muro User’s Guide.

It is free, it is from Deviant Art, and anyone can have fun with it. No artistic training is necessary. I say this with confidence.  Prior to trying it, I’d relied almost exclusively on MS Paint as a drawing aid. I drew a snail using Muro. Here it is.

Snail Fantasy by Ellie K (Muro Drawing Application)

I think it is a beautiful snail. However, I will continue to restrict my public domain creations to screen shots and uploads from the Second Life™ interface by Linden Lab™ until I acquire a more refined aesthetic sensibility.

HTML Tip:  For that little trademark entityTM superscript, use this:

 entity™

or the character decimal code:

 entity & # 8 4 8 2;

Note that the character hex code

 entity & # 2 1 2 2;

did not work. Perhaps WordPress is to blame? Also note that the extra spaces are mine:  despite many efforts, with much html, WordPress insisted on converting my source into page view.

UPDATE: For a more comprehensive description of Muro, and a very nice visual which is probably more aesthetically appealing than my snail, I’d suggest having a look at the CAD blog on Muro.