ALA 275: Duty Now For The Future
What better way to begin 2009 than by looking at the future of web design? In Issue No. 275 of A List Apart, for people who make websites, we study the promise and problems of HTML 5, and chart a path toward mobile CSS that works.
Return of the Mobile Style Sheet
by DOMINIQUE HAZAËL-MASSIEUX
At least 10% of your visitors access your site over a mobile device. They deserve a good experience (and if you provide one, they’ll keep coming back). Converting your multi-column layout to a single, linear flow is a good start. But mobile devices are not created equal, and their disparate handling of CSS is like 1998 all over again. Please your users and tame their devices with handheld style sheets, CSS media queries, and (where necessary) JavaScript or server-side techniques.
Semantics in HTML 5
by JOHN ALLSOPP
The BBC’s dropping of hCalendar because of accessibility and usability concerns demonstrates that we have pushed the semantic capability of HTML far beyond what it can handle. The need to clearly and unambiguously add rich, meaningful semantics to markup is a driving goal of the HTML 5 project. Yet HTML 5 has two problems: it is not backward compatible because its semantic elements will not work in 75% of our browsers; and it is not forward compatible because its semantics are not extensible. If “making up new elements” isn’t the solution, what is?
Tags: HTML5, mobileCSS, webstandards, alistapart, johnallsopp, W3C, Dominique Hazael-Massieux
Filed under: A List Apart, Accessibility, Advocacy, Design, HTML5, Markup, Standards, Web Design, Web Standards, mobile
Thanks for the post; I have been assesing the mobile-user-friendliness of my blog!
I agree, the first posts of the year should be about Web Design (sort of lightly did the same on my own site), but hang on: aren’t Mobile Style Sheets and HTML5 both purely about code rather than design? Certainly, there’s no doubt how important the two topics mentioned are for web design though.
Those two problems for HTML5 listed by John are really significant stumbling blocks aren’t they?! Okay, I’m now heading over ALA to read the rest :)