28 Waves...

Getting the Most Out of QR Codes Using URI Schemes

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:46:40 +0800

Getting the Most Out of QR Codes Using URI Schemes:

useful information about QR codes

The Future Of Screen Typography Is In Your Hands - Smashing Coding | Smashing Coding

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:15:34 +0800

The Future Of Screen Typography Is In Your Hands - Smashing Coding | Smashing Coding:

get your typography right…

Review Of Cross-Browser Testing Tools - Smashing Magazine | Smashing Magazine

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:32:34 +0800

Review Of Cross-Browser Testing Tools - Smashing Magazine | Smashing Magazine:

browser testing…a must

The Great Disk Drive in the Sky: How Web giants store big—and we mean big—data

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:34:02 +0800

The Great Disk Drive in the Sky: How Web giants store big—and we mean big—data:

interesting and useful

How to Prepare Your Social Game for Massive Growth

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 17:26:45 +0800

How to Prepare Your Social Game for Massive Growth:

A good reference for building scalable web applications.

Free Fonts for Designers and Logo Artists

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 17:28:32 +0800

Free Fonts for Designers and Logo Artists:

Cool fonts…

localtunnel: instantly show localhost to the rest of the world

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 16:06:05 +0800

localtunnel: instantly show localhost to the rest of the world:

Cool… :)

Getting started with HTML5 - inspiration, basics, tutorials and resources

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:28:12 +0800

A while back, I wrote about a latest trend in web design called responsive web design (link). Its not just any trend though and is proving to be really valuable for both developers and consumers.

Today, I’ll talk about a big advancement in web technologies - HTML5.

Introduction

A one liner definition…

HTML5 is the latest iteration of the HTML spec that aims to enable developers deliver richer user experience depending less on third-party plugins.

Ok, but what is HTML?

You should not read this post if you don’t know what HTML is. Read this and this first instead.

I’m kidding, I know what HTML is, please go on!

Fine, read on at your own risk! As I was saying, HTML5 defines a spec that all new browsers must implement to improve a ton of things like semantics, functionality, reduced dependency on third-party plugins, CSS3 support, etc.

Some background

Apparently, the folks at WHATWG, started the initial efforts on HTML5 spec based on current web application requirements (for example, a blog requires a header, sidebar and footer). Its still a draft in the sense that the spec isn’t complete. But browser vendors did a really good thing by starting to implement HTML5 (along with CSS3) spec into their browsers. Google chrome, Mozilla firefox and other major browsers now support many features of HTML5 and CSS3.

What about backward compatibility

Yeah, that’s one of the major hurdles we developers face when implementing HTML5 for older browsers. But our awesome community is doing its best to help all other developers to quickly write HTML5 apps by creating amazing tools and frameworks - some of which are hacks to support older browsers and some help us with our workflow.

A bit more details

So what’s so unique/great about HTML5 that everybody is so excited about? Good question. It defines a lot of new features that browsers should have. Here’s the list…

New elements (like header, footer, etc) to make your HTML more semantic
New attributes. Some are tag specific and some are new and fun global attributes
Full CSS3 support
Video and audio - this means no dependency on Flash (unless you want streaming)
2D/3D graphics - yes, you read it correctly! (you can use canvas element or SVG or new CSS3 features)
Local storage - more storage than cookies (like the Flash player storage)
Local SQL database
Local file access
Application cache (especially useful when you want to make your application available offline)
Web workers - kind of multi-threading in Javascript
new XMLHTTPRequest for better Ajax
new form elements and attributes, input types, automatic validation

Looks cool right? Lets dive in then!

First: Some inspiration

Before I let you into the details of how you can go about learning HTML5, I want you to be a little more excited about it, and so below are some really amazing websites that use HTML5 (and CSS3, because they kind of hand-in-hand).

Make sure you are on a latest browser when viewing these websites.

Wired

Tron

The wilderness downtown

Unfold

S5

Rickard Sund photography

Aventador

The endless mural

HTML5 readiness

20 things I learned from web

Nike better world

Awesome…right? Lets start learning HTML5 then!

Get the basics right

W3 schools - a very vanilla introduction to HTML5
HTML5 doctor
HTML5 doctor - more from the doctor!
Creatiface’s big list - really useful list
HTML5 cheat sheet - from smashing magazine. Very comprehensive
Web expedition 18 - some great tutorials listed here
Intro on how HTML5 and CSS3 work together

Then go for some tutorials on specific features - here’s a list that you can go after

Tuts+ has a really big collection of HTML5 tutorials
Speckboy talks about the audio and video tags
HTML5 web workers - a very useful feature
Working with SVG
Writing polyfills - if you ever want to write a polyfill (A polyfill is a piece of code that provides the functionality a developer expects the browser to provide natively, in this case HTML5 features in older browsers)

Now for some tools, frameworks, etc

The blogosphere has covered this extensively. So I’m just going to list a few links that I found useful.

Web expedition 18 has this useful list
This Modernizr’s wiki page has a ton of polyfills listed
I’ve listed a few frameworks at the bottom of my responsive web design article

How to know if you can use a specific HTML5 feature

This question comes because not all browsers support all HTML5 features. Thankfully there are some websites that can help in this regard

http://html5please.us/ - a useful page that tells you what features you can use and if any fallbacks are required
HTML5 readiness - a similar page with different presentation
Can I Use - very comprehensive and really useful

Some end notes

Now as exciting as HTML5 looks, as mentioned above, its still a evolving standard and you’ll have to keep yourself up to pace with where its going because its changing/updating really fast. Also, the frameworks/tools will help you to future proof your website by providing backward compatibility and silently getting out of the way when the browser already has the feature available.

Have anything to share about HTML5? Use the comments section.

color psychology…

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 18:07:19 +0800

color psychology…

40 Best Typeface Combinations in Web Design

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:17:34 +0800

40 Best Typeface Combinations in Web Design:

these combos do the job really well…

25 Fresh Typography Free Fonts For Your Next Designs

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:15:19 +0800

25 Fresh Typography Free Fonts For Your Next Designs

Workshop / Chrome Experiments

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 13:25:51 +0800

Workshop / Chrome Experiments:

Awesome cutting edge tutorials

The 6 Least Impressive Ways Anyone Ever Got Rich | Cracked.com

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 09:45:50 +0800

The 6 Least Impressive Ways Anyone Ever Got Rich | Cracked.com:

wow…

6 Branding Approaches They Forgot to Teach You in Business...

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:51:00 +0800

6 Branding Approaches They Forgot to Teach You in Business School
Neil Patel, quicksprout.com

Do you have all the basics of branding in place, but you are still struggling to create even a dent in your competitor’s market share?

Most companies don’t get branding… and for the ones that do, it’s often not enough. But if you…

6 Branding approaches they didn’t teach you in business school