Are there resources or JS libraries to emulate HTML5 features, if the browser doesn't fully support HTML5.
I am specifically looking to target mobile web applications.
Thanks,
Sri
Maybe you should give a try to HTML5shiv.
Modernizr is a library for detecting support for HTML5 and CSS3 features.
It doesn’t do any automatic fixing itself (I don’t think so anyway...), but it’s a solid base to use for adapting your application to browsers that don’t support what you need.
Not sure how well it runs on mobile devices — JavaScript performance tends to be pretty slow on mobile.
Most mobile browser don´t have good js support. So it´s difficult you can emulate HTML5 or anything.
Related
Features of HTML5 are no doubt very compelling but is it a good time to start development in HTML5 ?
I just have started development in HTML5 and realized at the time even not all HTML5 input types are supported by all browsers. It means it is not sure about basic stuff like input forms.
Please share how you are managing these things ? (Using HTML5 code with browsers currently supporting HTML5)
HTML 5 is still under development so you've got to be careful. Certain features, such as the more basic ones like <header> and <footer>, are less likely to change before the final release. The doctype decleration is unlikely to change. I wouldn't rely on the multimedia support as supported formats vary widely accross browsers.
The momentum behind HTML5 is strong and it is indeed a good time to get started if you have not already.
At the lowest level, you would need to write feature detection in your pages to see if the particular browser supports the HTML5 feature that you want to use.
I suggest the following:
Use sites like caniuse.com to determine the current support for a particular feature across browsers.
Use templates like HTML5 Boilerplate, which give you a structure for the HTML5 page that you can use , with support for various shims that bring in support for HTML5 features in older browsers.
If you prefer doing the detection yourself, use a library like Modernizr.
As with all cross-browser development, you can never rely on any support in the browser. If you target older browsers, then do not rely on HTML5 features. I haven't had problems with using the HTML5 doctype in older browsers, but specific features can be troublesome — e.g. you can use <header> elements, but IE won't let you style them in any way as it disregards header styles as invalid.
As long as you need to support old enough browsers, it will never be a good time to start using HTML5. The only thing that decides whether it's okay to use HTML5 is which browsers you want to support.
HTML5 is much easier then previous ones, It has developed allot in input fields, though its still under development and not complete yet.
You can check here http://html5test.com/ which browser supports HTML5 how much?
Currently, Chrome is the best that supports the HTML5 more than any other web browser.
-Thanks.
Take a look at the table in this wikipedia article. There is a lot of variability amongst browsers as to which parts of HTML5 are currently supported. This website tests your web browser to see which features it supports, so install a bunch of different browsers on your computer and test them for yourself.
Is there any single framework with which I can build a css3, html5 website that is compatible for all browsers including IE7 and later? Can http://html5boilerplate.com/ boilerplate help me in this?
You will never get the IE7 or IE8 rendering engine to achieve full compatibility with HTML5, CSS3, and other modern technologies. They are simply not capable of it.
However there are some hacks, tools and plugins which can get you part of the way.
Tools like Modernizr will help you by allowing you to detect which features are supported, to give your site a chance to work around it.
jQuery is a great library anyway, but is particularly good in this context because it abstracts a lot of browser differences away from the developer. Some things are easy in most browsers but a real pain in IE; jQuery takes a lot of that kind of stuff and makes it easy regardless.
Dean Edwards' IE7.js and Selectivzr are both Javascript libraries that give IE support for lots of the CSS selectors which were missing in older versions. This allows you to write your stylesheets without worrying so much about what IE supports. (IE7.js also fixes a number of IE's other glitches and missing features too)
CSS3Pie is a hack for IE that adds support for CSS border-radius, gradients and box-shadow.
There are in fact a whole load of hacks along these lines, all aimed at adding features to older versions of IE which it is missing. Modernizr's website has a big list of them here: https://github.com/Modernizr/Modernizr/wiki/HTML5-Cross-Browser-Polyfills
However there is one big caveat to all of this. Speed. IE<=8 is a slow browser. It has a slow Javascript engine. Virtually all of these hacks are javascript based. You might get away with running a few of them on any given site, but trying to use enough of them to give IE anything like full support for HTML5 and CSS3 will slow the browser down to the point of being unusable.
There is one other angle to approach this question though, and that's Google's Frame plugin for IE. This basically installs the entire Google Chrome browser engine into IE. The user is still running the IE shell, but the web page is rendered as it would be in an up-to-date version of Chrome.
This sounds great, but of course it isn't perfect. The main down-side of it is that the end user has to install it manually onto their computer, which means that you as a web developer have no real control over whether it's there or not. So its not something you can just add to your site and expect everything to magically work.
Finally, you may also be interested in CanIUse.com, which gives browser support tables for various features, allowing you to see at a glance what is and what isn't supported in various versions of each browser.
HTML 5 is more an umbrella term for a variety of technologies than any one thing or framework. Really, any implementation you do should degrade gracefully-- and that is what makes the site browser compatible. Detect what the browser supports, and then have alternatives that are legacy friendly.
Check out: http://accessites.org/site/2007/02/graceful-degradation-progressive-enhancement/
And: http://diveintohtml5.ep.io/detect.html
Good luck.
Modernizr is an open-source JavaScript library that helps you build the next generation of HTML5 and CSS3-powered websites.
MS is including it in the ASP.net MVC template projects
html5boilerplate won't help you.
As others have said html5 and css3 are very broad terms, there's no framework that implements all of the features provided by both of these. In fact they are not equally supported in browsers that say that they support them. And more, even W3C guys (who write the specs for html5 and css3) are not yet established on what features they will include or what steps will be required to implement them. You get the idea...
But.. if you narrow your requirements to some specific features, like video, audio tags, canvas drawing, nifty css effects, File API, or others, you CAN find frameworks that implement (or try to mimic) them with available technologies in cross-browser manner (more or less).
Can I use the HTML 5 doctype in older browsers like IE 8 or 7? If not what would be a good method to handle cross browser compatibility?
A lot of people use and recommend the open source modernizr javascript library to handle these issues. You can code for HTML5 and modernizr will try to gracefully degrade for features not supported by the user's browser. As they say:
Taking advantage of the new
capabilities of HTML5 and CSS3 can
mean sacrificing control over the
experience in older browsers.
Modernizr 2 is your starting point for
making the best websites and
applications that work exactly right
no matter what browser or device your
visitors use.
It is high-quality enough to be used by Google, Microsoft, The Economist, About.com, The Knot, Good and Posterous.
I'm going to develop a theme for a WordPress blog but I'm not sure if I should do it using XHTML/CSS2 or if I already can do it using HTML5/CSS3.
Usually, I use 960.gs framework but it isn't available with HTML5/CSS3. I've heard that the 52framework works fine as well and I'm thinking about adopt it for my project, but I'm really insecure about HTML5's early adoption (?).
Someone, please, can help me to decide which technology adopt on my project.
Thanks a lot.
HTML5 and CSS3 are "ready to use" - you need to learn a little about the concept of "Polyfilling", but you can make the user experience very similar in all browsers, even if you lose a few transition effects and rounded corners along the way.
My website has been HTML5 since 2009 and I tested it across many, many browsers.
So the bottom line is, HTML5 is designed to be highly backwards compatible with HTML4.01 and there are lots of techniques for making content available to older browsers that don't support the more funky elements in HTML5.
The 960 grid system will work with HTML5 and CSS3 because it's just a list of classes. CSS3 doesn't really give you any grid layout features yet that are widely adopted enough to be helpful.
I would use CSS3 and HTML5 as much as you can but don't forget about progressive enhancement. Don't blindly ignore a browser because it doesn't support CSS3. You should use HTML5 and CSS3 appropriately and not because it's cool.
What audience are you designing it for? Do you need to be bleeding edge?
I would say use XHTML/CSS2 as that will be supported for years unless you need the functionality in the others.
Being an early adopter can be quite painful, so only do that if you have good reasons to.
Html5 and css3 for sure!
The only thing you might want to ask yourself is wether or not you want to use the new elements (article, aside, nav etc.) Because if you do, you need to depend on Javascript in order for IE to render your page correctly.
Every new page should be written with the new doctype imo:
<!DOCTYPE html>
If you want a starting template that works well in all major browsers you might want to check this out: http://html5boilerplate.com/
Whole-heartedly agree with Bravax.
It's all really based on who your audience is. If you want your site to be on the bleeding edge, regardless of audience, go for it.
I have heard great things about 52framework! I am about to implement it into a full-on 100+ page site redesign. The good thing about it, is that it plays nice with IE (even 6!).
It is entirely related to the markets you are aiming at. You will be able to have more interactive content and easier to maintain styles with CSS3. This said, many of the html5 and css3 elements are not yet standardized. Even among the modern, cutting-edge, browsers there can be major differences.
If you are making a theme for experimental purposes or to play around with, I would go with the newer technologies.
If you are making this for consumption on a wide sale, and potential sale, you really should avoid technologies not supported by older browers, IE 7 and 8 especially.
They are only supported in new browsers. I think everyone here knows that. But if majority of users are still on older browsers that don't support CSS3/HTML5, shouldn't that push developers to use older scripting languages (ie:HTML4/CSS2).
They are both draft specifications which are partially supported (to various degrees) in current browsers.
shouldn't that push developers to use older scripting languages (ie:HTML4/CSS2).
Leaving aside neither of those being scripting languages…
Using draft features can provide a better experience in some browsers, while the fallback is still acceptable.
JavaScript can sometimes be used to support browsers which don't have native support for a feature (although usually with a performance hit for those browsers).
Building around draft features provides practical experience with how those features work (and helps determine if there needs to be more work on the design before the feature goes into a final specification).
Building JS based around draft features gives common ground for different developers to aim for when building scripts to achieve a specific task. This increases the interoperability and ability to switch third party scripts.
No, we as developers need to push forward. Tools like Google Chrome Frame and Explorer Canvas will allow us to push the edge without too much worry about the browsers that can't keep up.
As #Rob states most of HTML5 is just HTML4 with defined error handling. Assuming you are not using the new parts of HTML5, there are no disadvantages and several benefits to using the HTML5 doctype now, including a better spec and a better validator.
A lot of CSS3 (rounded corners, drop shadows, RGBa, #font-face…) can be used as progressive enhancement on top of CSS2.1 rules. Conveniently this is also the CSS3 that is most implemented.
I think this question points to either a misunderstanding of HTML5 & CSS3, or a misunderstanding of underpinning concepts like progressive enhancement, the web trifle/layer cake, and the cascade.
For further explanation, please refer to: Do websites need to look exactly the same in every browser
What HTML5 can you reasonably expect to be able to use reliably cross-browser in the early months of 2010?
As the article above states, there is ExplorerCanvas until IE supports the <canvas/> tag.
There is also svgweb until IE supports SVG.
And Microsoft announced CSS3 support in IE9. As IE is pushed through Windows Update, I'm not afraid of using CSS3 and HTML5 right now.
shouldn't that push developers to use
older scripting languages
(ie:HTML4/CSS2)?
If that's your only question, then your answer is yes. "Most" developers are still using HTML 4.01 and mostly CSS2 for the reasons you stated: they're well supported on today's popular browsers. :D
See these:
should I switch to html5?
support of CSS3 among common browsers (not very good yet..)
I'd say, use the broadly supported options now but make sure that your designs degrade 'gracefully' with browsers that don't support these new features as they will just ignore them.
HTML5 is mostly backwards compatible with HTML4.01, and the same browsers will still be able to handle HTML4.01 elements. Like all properties in CSS, developers will be aware and careful of how the CSS3 properties they use will affect users who can't see them (typically IE users).