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I am designing a website which has to reach old and new browsers. With this in mind should I program in HTML5? Currently the website is only in html 5. The question is: Is it stupid in my case to use HTML5, should I use a "switch"(is this even possible) to redirect old browsers?
The question is, what aspects of html5 do you plan to use?
If your website is mostly static html & javascript, no audio and no embedded video, then I would say it use HTML4.
If your not using any tags in html5 dont rush it, no
If you're trying to reach a broad audience, I wouldn't necessarily jump into HTML 5 yet. It's still not supported widely or consistently enough to rely on it. However, there are several resources available if you want to give it a shot.
When Can I Use... should be a big help. It shows which features of HTML 5 are supported in which browsers fairly clearly. It would probably be good to research further about each tag you plan on using. Learn how the major browsers have implemented the tags, and if there's any quirks or bare-bones implementations that might be an obstacle to the average user.
I've heard Modernizr listed as a means of leveraging HTML 5 elements while maintaining backwards support for old browsers. Do note that I can't testify personally to how well it performs, having never used it before.
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After I came up with this idea, I did some research and found this, https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-the-Internet-switch-to-JSON-instead-of-HTML
The answers make sense, except that I think modern browsers should be able to make the switch smoothly.
Say we have the following html,
<div class="basket col">
<div class="btn">Run Robot</div>
<p>Next Fruit is
<span>
some text here
</span>
</p>
</div>
And say We convert it to a simpler syntax (just for explaining the idea),
div class="basket col" <
div class="btn" < Run Robot >
p < Next Fruit is
span <
some text here
>
>
>
Modern browsers can start supporting both syntaxes. The developers can then decide which syntax to use. If they don't want to support legacy browsers, they can start using the new syntax.
Are there any technical limitations to do this migration?
FYI, I am not proposing a new syntax, I am asking why modern browsers wouldn't start supporting a minimal synatx like this, or a templating language like HAML or PUG?
And for the people who are downvoting, can u guys at least make a comment on why this question is bad?
There's no inherent technical limitation, but: it took decades to get the entire web industry on the same page to support one specific HTML syntax, and web developers need to produce markup which is backwards compatible with existing browsers and any other consumer of HTML until the existing infrastructure ages away and is replaced with new infrastructure which all supports your NewMarkupLanguage™®.
It's a trivial matter to come up with some new markup language, it's a gargantuan task that will take another decade or five to get that new language adopted by everyone. The impedance here is compatibility, and the advantage is simply not that great as to be worth it. gzipping your HTTP response solves most of the problem.
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I'm following a tutorial series on web development. While I already have a basic understanding of HTML and how to use it to structure a page, I'm indulging myself and watching the very beginner tutorials. The funny thing is, in these tutorials the author is using tags like address and cite. When he describes why one should use these tags, he explains it only as "semtantics."
While I feel like these tags may have been more prevalent ten years ago, I never run across anyone using them besides this guy. Given he is professional, I'm now conflicted on whether or not its really necessary to use them. What is the benefit?
According to the current HTML5.1 specification nightly (as modern as it gets):
The address element is valid perfectly fine to use and so is the cite element. While a lot of sites tend to mostly use tags like div and span you can feel safe to use both address and cite .
I think it's good practice that will help you later when you have to read your HTML again to insert changes. It improves accessibility of your document as well as lets parsers other than browsers understand it better.
(Note, address and cite are legal in the old HTML specification too)
The benefit of semantic tags is that they give your html some structure - by using them you are encoding meaning into your html that can be useful in all kinds of areas. Search engines often use semantic tags to assist in ranking pages, to use a simple example. Whilst it might not always seem necessary, it is good to get into the habit of using them wherever possible.
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So say I have a website that was built using tables and specifically width tags (Awful I know). According to w3schools that website isn't using HTML5 because the width is no longer supported. My question is would I need to change that code, because it wouldn't be supported by modern day browsers? Or perhaps because it won't be supported later down the road?
That all depends on what browsers you want your site to support. However, as a practical matter most browsers are going to be backward compatible for a while. Most modern browsers still support very early versions of HTML going back to the mid 90's.
That said, it is always a good idea to make sure you are setting the doctype tag on the page appropriately so the browser knows what it is getting and can accommodate it.
There never was a width tag in HTML. For some elements, the width attribute can be used. There is no change in browser support to it; HTML5 drafts require browsers to support legacy attributes even though those drafts declare them as obsolete. W3schools is unreliable and misleading; see w3fools.
As a general rule I would say no. I haven't read the spec or anything but it sounds like the width tag is being depreciated on tables?
If this site was intended to last 6-7 years without major changes then maybe you might want to futureproof it but it seems rather unlikely that the browser venders will break support any time soon. Too much of the web would be broken.
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What all web servers support HTML 5 content? Do they have some config that allows to switch between HTML versions based on client browsers?
HTML 5 was explicitly designed to degrade gracefully in older browsers that do not understand it. As such, there's no need to serve different versions. You may or may not have to put in some client-side Javascript-based shims for some of the more advanced HTML 5 features, but there's no need to have several versions of the same HTML document.
You can determine the users browser agent in PHP or some other web-cgi, look it up in some giant array to determine if it's HTML5 compatible, and serve them a HTML5 page if so, HTML4 if not.
In pure HTML, browsers ignore elements they don't understand, but will treat it like it's not there, so you can use that for SOME tricks, but it's mostly done by serving a different page for HTML4/HTML5 browsers.
Web servers would know client's browser by Useragent.
And with browers' names and versions, the server can identify whether a client's browser
supports HTML5 or not.
With that information, you can dynamically change DOCTYPE in your page
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Or just crawlers ignore HTML5 new-tags (like <article>, <section>, <video>, <nav>, and so on...) indexing the pages?
For example, speaking about google-crawler, I found only old articles like this (2 years ago).
Maybe the rules have been changed?!?
To be honest, I don't think much have changed since that article was written. If you're just thinking about using HTML5 for SEO, then don't. However, if you want to use HTML5 for other reasons, then go ahead. A lot of HTML5 features are still not supported by all browsers so watch out for that if you care about cross-browser support when you build websites.
Personally, I'm using the HTML5 doctype when coding, but I still don't use any of the new HTML5 elements. I do use some CSS3, but I make sure everything's OK in all major browsers before proceeding.
Again, HTML5 won't give you any advantage in search engine listings as far as I know, but as long as you keep your markup semantic, your content fresh and about topic you'll climb the listings.