The HTML5 specification as managed by both W3C and WHATWG is an unfinished, incomplete specification that can change at any time. That isn’t a criticism, it’s just a statement of fact. It’s a fact often ignored by people and companies who choose to implement it and then cry foul when…
Amazon’s long-awaited tablet/e-reader was formally announced today, and the conversations about whether or not it will compete the iPad are underway. I don’t much care about that. I am far more interested in the web browser that it includes. Amazon Silk is a new web browser, built on Webkit, and…
I downloaded and installed Adobe’s new web design tool, Muse (code name) (also at Adobe Labs) out of morbid curiosity. Just like Adobe Edge (which refuses to launch), I had very little expectation that this would be a fully-developed sales-ready product. Instead of getting into extensive detail about the quality…
Guns don’t kill people, the bullets do that (unless you pistol-whip someone to death, which means you probably ran out of bullets). Similarly HTML5, JavaScript, CSS and even Flash aren’t dangerous on their own, but in the wrong hands and with the wrong motives they can do harm. I wrote…
You may recall from my post in February, WebM, H.264 Debate Still Going, that the H.264 video codec is considered patent-encumbered (which resulted in its dismissal from the HTML5 specification) and Google has argued that its own WebM / VP8 codec is made up of patents it owns, releasing it…
This photo represents some of the technologies (pint glasses) that HTML5 (t-shirt) is thought to encompass (drink). The horror of that concept is represented by the hands (defensive wounds coming).I had the pleasure of sharing some pints with Bruce Lawson and Chris Mills last week in London. While discussing what…
This article was originally posted on evolt.org, an online resource for web developers, maintained by web developers. I have granted evolt.org the right to use this article on its web site, and it is the only entity with the right to reproduce it. While spending some time hacking through experiments…
It’s only been 13 years, but CSS version 2.1 is now officially a W3C Recommendation — essentially meaning the specification is final. Which of course means you are now all free to use it in your web pages. CSS2 became a W3C Recommendation on May 12, 1998, over 13 years…
If you follow the ongoing developments of HTML5, by which I mean the W3C specification and not the regular JavaScript and CSS sites-of-cool-gee-whiz bandied about across the web (Apple.com (Not Really) Updated to HTML5, Google Doodle: Bouncy Balls Aren’t HTML5, Google, Arcade Fire Confused on HTML5), then you probably know…
Nearly two weeks ago I wrote up a post outlining the W3C decision to no longer require the alt attribute on images in HTML5: Image alt Attributes Not Always Required in HTML5. I was genuinely surprised to see that was the most popular post on this blog and garnered the…
It has long been accepted that the alt attribute of the <img> element, while not a perfect method to provide a text alternative to an image, is still a necessary attribute to provide at least some level of access to the image content for users who cannot see the image…
When Adobe released InDesign it included a novel feature that was otherwise unheard of to the average agency — the ability to import content into its page templates from XML data. Having developed a web content management system (QuantumCMS for those of you interested in hiring us), we had selected…