Planning to use HTML5 in a big project, I need to make an exact timeline for future changes.
Is there any source to tell me when a particular feature of HTML5 will be ready? Is there a roadmap for HTML5 support for each particular web engine?
Just for some more details, I’m working on a social/video sharing site. I want to use new features from CSS3 to HTML5 to JavaScript. Don’t tell me “You can use <video> right now” because I know that!!
Also consider the fact that it takes some time for all people to update their browsers to new ones
Yes:
When can I use...
I need to make an exact time-line for future changes.
So you want Microsoft, Apple, Mozilla, Opera and Google to tell you exactly when they’ll be done adding features to their browsers? Just e-mail them, I’m sure they’ll get right on that :)
Naw, interesting question. I don’t think any browser manufacturers commit to implementing specific features particularly far into the future. In the case of HTML5, the spec itself says that the spec won’t be done until there are two agreeing implementations, so it’s very much a matter of “wait until an implementation ships”.
In the case of WebKit and Firefox, they‘re open-source projects, which I imagine makes it more difficult to commit to far-future dates. Then again, I seem to remember Microsoft being a bit late with Vista, so it’s probably difficult to commit to dates for closed-source projects as well. If you could edit your question with the exact date when your social video sharing site will be finished, that’d be a good start.
A quick Google turns up:
Internet Explorer
Microsoft have got IE 9 in beta. This page claims to be some sort of roadmap: http://microsoft-journal.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!A33F7112F6C1D499!878.entry
There’s also their Internet Explorer Blog
Firefox
Mozilla announced their plans for 3.6 here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Namoroka
Couldn’t find a similar document for 4 (which was originally announced as 3.7), but robertc pointed to this document which details the HTML5 (and CSS3) features added in Firefox 4: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Firefox_4_for_developers
WebKit (Safari and Chrome)
“Apple doesn’t comment on future products” — http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/FAQ
But the WebKit team do have a blog, Surfin’ Safari
Opera
Folks were apparently clamouring for a roadmap last year: http://dev.opera.com/forums/topic/294965
It all depends on your target audience. If it is South Korean middle aged businessmen with 99% IE6 penetration, you're not likely to be able to use anything fancy any time soon. If it's art directors working in advertising, you can probably already use whatever bleeding edge feature Webkit has implemented.
Check your logs, and use the site sAc linked.
Related
Every now and then our boss issues a Developer Challenge competition. He challenges us to do something with a new technology and whoever does the best wins a small prize. It's Just a bit of fun.
This time the challenge is to do something with HTML5. One of the requirements is that is has to work only in Chrome. I don't think this is a realistic requirement though, because I thought Firefox 6 & Chrome were pretty much on par with each other?
Are there any features of HTML5 that will work only in Chrome?
You can use the FileWriter API. While there is a bunch of browsers implementing the File API, I think that only Chrome allows writing files (see http://caniuse.com/#search=filewriter).
caniuse.com lists other HTML5-features as well that are supposedly exclusive to Chrome right now, e.g. web notifications and <details> tag.
Check this link http://html5test.com/results.html with Chrome.
Update:
I find this usefull link with compatibility tables for support of HTML5, CSS3, SVG and more: When can I use...
NaCl: Google's take on ActiveX. Have fun.
Like the title says I'm just wondering the current support for canvas.toDataUrl? I have it working in Firefox 4 but haven't really tried it in any other browers. When I look it up on Google most of the results are pretty scattered as some are from a year ago. It says its only supported with webkit nightly builds. (which I assume now are the actual releases)
I'd also like to know the support for mobile devices as well.
I personally prefer using caniuse.com for finding out the current browser support. Caniuse covers various major releases of each browser, as well as some mobile browsers. However, I always recommend that with anything mission critical, you test in all browsers just to be on the safe side.
If you take a look again at caniuse.com you will see that the support tables are all color-coded and they tell you whether a browser fully-supports, partially-supports, does not support, or does not support (but a polyfill exists). The canvas.toDataUrl, property would fall under the category of "basic support", which shows that the canvas api (or rather the current working draft for it) is fully supported in all major browsers, and there is a polyfill available for IE.
So while it doesn't go into great detail about the specific properties browsers support, it stands to reason if a browser "fully-supports" the basic canvas API, you can safely assume that includes toDataUrl. Once again, if you dont want to leave things to chance, or if you for some reason do not trust caniuse.com, your best bet is to build a test-suite and personally test your app against all browsers.
Actually it's currently broken in the webkit nightly build, a minor security bug I found a couple days ago:
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=91016
But in general in the stable release of Chrome it works just fine. In IE9 it works just fine too.
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I know it will be 'finalized/made official' in 2012 (and something to do with it being given 'Recommendation status' in 2022), but I'm wondering if it's a good idea to make a site using HTML5 now.
A simple portfolio sorta site? Given that most users (most people using IE) won't have support for it, although IE9 (shock) will be shipping with support.
There is no one monolithic HTML5. HTML5 is being developed as a single large (oh so very large) document, yes, but that doesn't reflect reality(*).
That is to say, HTML5 is a collection of loosely related incremental improvements to HTML4. Some of those new features are widely implemented already. Some of them you can safely use knowing that they'll degrade usefully for old browsers. Some of them you can use as long as you add explicit fallback code. Some of them will be shutting out some browsers for the foreseeable future. Some of them will only ever have minority support. Some of them may never be implemented at all, or may yet be edited out of the standard. And many new features that are often regarded as being “HTML5” aren't in HTML5 at all, but other standards (CSS3, ECMA262-5, DOM extensions, WebSocket...).
You will have to pick and choose which the features of the New Web you want individually, judging by current and apparent future support. There's not a switch for ‘using’ vs ‘not using’ HTML5, other than merely the doctype itself (which doesn't get you any new behaviour).
*: This was a big mistake, in my opinion. It would have been better to quickly standardise the bits that were already supported by everyone—like HTML3.2 did after the HTML3.0 fiasco (XHTML2, anyone?)—and then add new features in a more modular fashion. But that's not what happened, and it's too late to do much about it now.
It is a good idea to prepare your website for HTML5, but please be backwards compatible to allow users with a browser that is not yet "ready" for HTML5 to be able to view your site, event if that means limited functionality. That way, users with the latest browsers will reap full benefits, but those of us who are not on the bleeding edge will still be able to view content. As you can see, I feel somewhat strongly about this topic, but hey, I'm a realist.
Also, keep in mind that there are technologies like Silverlight and Flash, today, that can support rich functionality, if you want to allows non-HTML5 compatible browsers to also view such content.
There are people that wanna be progressive, those are the ones that bring the change, and I figure your one of them. So my advice would be, sure, cool, use it, just with care that users whose browsers don't support it also have decent experience.
Things that might help:
http://code.google.com/p/html5shiv/
("Public repo for the latest HTML5 JavaScript shiv for IE to recognise and style the HTML5 elements. ")
Also, as new user i can't post more than one link, but look for css3pie:
("PIE makes Internet Explorer 6-8 capable of rendering several of the most useful CSS3 decoration features.")
Once IE 9 is released, all major browsers vendors will support a large subset of HTML5. http://caniuse.com is a very useful site for answering the question "Which HTML5 related feature can I use now (or in the near future)?"
Updated (to address #Crusader's comment):
By some measures the market share of browsers without at least some HTML5 support (i.e. IE 6,7,8) is now lower than 50%. In other words, the era of HTML5 has already arrived.
With the arrival of IE 9 soon, I predict the share of browsers with no-HTML5 support will fall to less than 25% in the next 12 months. And for those who refuse to upgrade (or can't because of corporate policy), Chrome Frame allows easy use of HTML5 in IE 6,7, and 8 for sites that need to support those browsers.
Or consider: the only reason MS is implementing HTML5 features in IE 9 (instead of continuing to put all its eggs in the Silverlight basket) is because they know HTML5 has already arrived and they are late to the party.
Certain bits of HTML5, sure. Almost all new elements introduced in HTML5 can be used already, thanks to the html5shiv, and if you provide a suitable fallback you could be using <video> and <audio> as well. Those, along with the more advanced scripting features (local storage, etc.) are the features that will take time to implement.
Also, while Mark Pilgrim's Dive into HTML5 mostly discusses features that won't be available for some time (at least not in IE, i.e. the majority of web users), the chapter on semantics is both interesting and applicable.
Also keep in mind what your target audience is; if most of your visitors are from the designer community (or whatever), most of them probably have a browser with HTML5 capabilities. WebKit browsers already support much of the HTML5 draft.
The thing you should understand is that html5 is not ONE big thing, it is a lot of bits and parts that you will start to use envtually here is a extract from Dive into HTML5
It’s not one big thing
You may well ask: “How can I start
using HTML5 if older browsers don’t
support it?” But the question itself
is misleading. HTML5 is not one big
thing; it is a collection of
individual features. So you can’t
detect “HTML5 support,” because that
doesn’t make any sense. But you can
detect support for individual
features, like canvas, video, or
geolocation.
You may think of HTML as tags and
angle brackets. That’s an important
part of it, but it’s not the whole
story. The HTML5 specification also
defines how those angle brackets
interact with JavaScript, through the
Document Object Model (DOM). HTML5
doesn’t just define a tag;
there is also a corresponding DOM API
for video objects in the DOM. You can
use this API to detect support for
different video formats, play a video,
pause, mute audio, track how much of
the video has been downloaded, and
everything else you need to build a
rich user experience around the
tag itself.
If you are really interested you will find this very interesting!
Realize that html5 is a blanket term. Using the doctype is just the start. I wouldn't start including advanced webkit animations in all your sites, but using border-radius and box-shadow will work with most(minus ie) browsers and degrade gracefully.
If you had to choose a browser (just one) to be the primarily supported browser for a company jumping into HTML5 (CSS3).. Which one would be your safest bet on the middle-long term?
Chrome, FireFox, Safari, IE?
I'm looking for an objective recommendation based on standards driven/compliant, developer tools, fast & correct feature implementations, memory footprint, etc.
UserBase/MarketShare would not be an issue because it would be on a closed environment in which we control the clients (which are basically big machines with a Web interface).
Thanks!
I would say a webkit based browser. That would be the best balance of speed/stability and HTML5/CSS3 features.
However I believe that Opera has the most implemented features.
Opera has always been in the lead, but they've also always had weird bugs. Right now, Chrome is in an interesting position: Google just bought an internet video protocol company (On2), and so they have the power to end the H.264 vs. Ogg Theora battle by releasing this great new codec they've bought as open source.
HTML5 itself isn't anything new: it's just new elements that display differently. Think of it like this: if HTML5 was the first to introduce the <blink> tag, developers would be a little iffy about it because you can just use CSS to set text-decoration:blink or use some Javascript to make the blinking happen.
With HTML5, things aren't that different. Most of the new elements are just extensions of <div>. For the ones that aren't (<video>, <audio>, <canvas>, etc.), there are either already strong implementations (pretty much across the board) or the implementations as complete as the HTML5 spec is.
Will there be a best browser for HTML5? Probably not. It's all just a matter of how the browsers position themselves (like I mentioned with Chrome above).
If you control the environment I would say pick one based on that has features your app can exploit to make your job easier. Otherwise, lower-common-denominator is a widely used approach for a small team.
I would say Gecko (firefox and friends) or webkit (safari, chrome and friends). I wouldn't go with IE nor Opera. Here is a HTML5/CSS3 comparison table that pretty much supports my views.
Safari’s pushing CSS animations and transitions, if they’re a big draw for you.
If you want to make a HTML5 app/site that focuses on one browser, then you might as well use HTML 4 and JavaScript. For the next many many years most HTML5 sites will have to function in non-HTML5 mode.
See HTML5 features as glacing on the cake, to add benefits to the browsers that can take advantage of it.
All the modern versions of browser support HTML 5. But recently launched internet explorer 9 specifically designed by keeping in mind future web technology needs and incorporated latest features that give rich and interactive web experience. Latest browser Internet explorer 9 has more support for Cascading Style Sheet than previous versions of Microsoft browser. It supports CSS3 and more emerging SVG2 markup standards. IE 9 includes new java script engine that designed to take advantage of multi core processor and give maximum performance.
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When I build a site, I'd like to have at least one browser I can show it off in without any hacks or workarounds, and yet still retain maximum functionality. Knowing that none of the browsers have perfect standards adherence, which one comes closest?
Also, are there any standards areas in which a single browser seems to specialize? Opera, for instance, seems to be bent on adhering to all voice-related CSS standards.
The way most people I know work is to run Firefox(with Firebug) and develop in that. Firebug is an invaluable tool for debugging. They will usually take what the get there and try to squeak it into IE and other browsers. Not exactly the answer to your question (Its not 100% compliant but its close), but hopefully it helps.
Safari using the latest WebKit nightly build.
Not that any browser in the world uses this yet (not even Chrome) but if all you're worried about is standards then that's your best bet - it passes Acid3, something no browser on the market can do yet.
This is an excellent question, but I find it hard to give a single answer. Traditionally, Opera has been the most standards compliant. For a long time, it was the ONLY browser to pass the ACID2 test in fact. FireFox and IE haven't been able to claim that (although supposedly IE8 is supposed to fix that, and FF is working on it all the time).
That having been said however, bear mind that IE has the largest "market share" of all the browsers right now (businesses have ties to MS, and Windows always comes with IE out of the box) followed closely by FireFox. So if your goal is to show off your app in a browser that most people will be using, it'll have to be one of those.
Purists will tell you that FF is more standards compliant than IE7 (and they are right), so that you should design for that and not IE. I can tell from many years as a designer/developer that pages taking that approach may not be a great idea. Bear in mind again - IE has the market share, and usually where it counts. So if it looks great in FF but breaks in IE, most users will be very upset, and the same vice-versa.
Best compromise - concentrate on those two. Tweak it to look right in at least FF AND IE, and now you've covered 90%+ of the people that will be using your website.
Don't get me wrong here - I'm not trying to dismiss the users of Opera, Safari, or any other browser. But if you want the most results for the least amount of work, then there ya go.
Best answer - take your time, do it right, test ALL the major browsers. The time spent working through these browser headaches ahead of time (when you can do it at your own pace) will be well rewarded. Compare that to the screaming client who wants to know why your page breaks in his favorite browser, and wants it fixed today. :)
"When I build a site, I'd like to have at least one browser I can show it off in without any hacks or workarounds, and yet still retain maximum functionality."
If you are testing your site, you would be better served to choose target browsers based on your users' needs.
Unless you are in a position where you can force your users to change to a particular browser, you need to test your site in whatever browser(s) they use.
Opera comes closest to standards compliance.
I use Firefox with IE tab and chrome. Firefox with IE tab because those are the two browsers with the most market share and chrome because it is one of the few windows browsers that use webkit, meaning it should display similarly to safari.
The way most people I know work is to
run Firefox(with Firebug) and develop
in that. Firebug is an invaluable tool
for debugging. They will usually take
what the get there and try to squeak
it into IE and other browsers. Not
exactly the answer to your question
(Its not 100% compliant but its
close), but hopefully it helps.
+1 - I prefer firefox for most browsing as I find it most stable and easiest to use, but when it comes to web development it takes the cake when combined with firebug! The others are good for testing, but I find that firefox+firebug makes everything so much easier to use
Try Google Chrome it uses the WebKit which is feature complete for the latest standards.
I used to use Opera and Firefox as my "Standards Compliant" browsers, but I've recently become much enamored with Safari. The WebKit under the hood is really solid, the javascript is really fast (or fast enough, anyway), and and the CSS support is pretty excellent. It's not perfect, but does a really solid job of doing what it's supposed to do.
Also, it has the greatest print-screen feature I've ever seen in a browser. Seriously. Whereas every other browser seems to really munge up any screen I try to print, Safari always seems to get it right. A minor thing, but worth major points in my book.
Edited to add: Chrome is coming close to taking Safari's place, but that print screen thing is still the deciding factor. Being able to just hit "print" during a meeting with a client and not have to fiddle with any settings to get it working right is a major relief.
Don't just use a standards compliant browser, use other tools such as the w3c validator.
I find that if you stick to standards compliant markup, and don't use anything too unusual, it will render fine in Firefox 2/3 and Safari/Chrome (and usually fine in IE7/8). If not, you're probably better off trying to simplify your markup, rather than introducing hacks and workarounds.
Using one browser for all your testing and then hacking it for others is how most people do it but that often leads to problems. Even though Safari may be a more standards compliant browser it is not a highly popular browser and I'd lean more toward using the browser your customer's are using most while writing 100% standard code and then adjusting for idiosyncrasies of other browsers. It's not ideal but it is more customer centered thinking.
I've seen web development companies with multiple full time employees that had bugs on their homepage because they did exactly what you seem to be thinking is your answer. They developed the webpage on a Mac and tested exclusively with Safari. The result was that over 60% of potential customers may have seen layout bugs if their browser was windowed.