IE users disabling javascript? - Well, IE makes my life miserable, but javascript fixes do a nice job to make it somewhat standards compliant. So,

CloudedVision

Well, IE makes my life miserable, but javascript fixes do a nice job to make it somewhat standards compliant. So, the big question is: Is it OK to rely on javascript to make things display good in IE? How many IE users disable javascript?

Also, what about HTML5 shiv or whatever its called?

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Panthr - Web Design and Development

Jason

If users are not using JavaScript then they are expecting a shocking web experience. Disabled Javascript users are very low in number.. just add a no script tag at the top for IE users saying 'Please enable javascript to properly render this page.'

As for the shiv, experiment with it, I haven't had a chance to look to far into HTML5 yet so I would appreciate that if you make any findings when it comes to shiv's reporting which you feel is best :).

CloudedVision

Well, the shiv is pretty simple. Include three lines of code in your header, and IE magically has HTML5 functionality. (For the semantic tags at least)

It just doesn't work with js disabled, thats why I was asking. (And ie8.js helps with those CSS bugs) And I was thinking of including a display:inline-block; js fix for IE6, IE7, and FF2.

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Panthr - Web Design and Development

Mike Hopley

You have to ask what you're getting in return for being an early adopter.

The new semantics in HTML5 don't do anything special for your website. It will look just the same, and it will be indexed much the same in search engines (they don't really need your hints to help them).

The new semantics will probably give an accessibility benefit, but not yet, because existing user agents don't take advantage of them. Development of screen readers tends to be very slow compared to mainstream browsers (I suppose because the market is so much smaller).

So what do you get? Well, bragging rights -- the geeky halo that always comes with being "ahead" of the pack. You also get the fun of playing with a new toy.

But there is a cost: you have to add complexity to the website -- to its development and its maintenance. Relying on javascript to fix layout and styling issues is seductive, but may well lead to bugs.

Maybe I'm just getting old, but it feels like I've been here before. ;) When I started learning web design "properly", I was filled with righteous zeal for doing everything "the right way". The ultimate expression of this silly attitude was my creating a sophisticated em-based, compressible, scalable layout.

Sure, my peers were impressed. Sure, it made me feel a bit special and clever -- if I'm honest, it made me feel somewhat smugly superior to all those plebs making fixed-width sites. But was it really that useful? How many visitors actually used it?

The CSS was (is) massively complicated. The layout was impossible without {display: table}, but IE didn't support it. Idealism trumped pragmatism: "I'll make IE work! I'll hack it to pieces until it does what I want!" So I gave IE (very) different styles, and I found an equal-height columns javascript fix.

At each step, it felt like I was doing something reasonable, something contained; it felt like I had the complexity under control. Did I ********. ;) Bugginess is non-linear in complexity: double the complexity, and you greatly more than double the bugs. You wouldn't believe some of the bugs I created, and the amount of time I wasted.

That's not to say that complexity should always be avoided. Complexity often comes with benefits that are worth the hassle. But when the benefits of added complexity are dubious, go for the simpler solution instead.

Part of me -- the OCD purist part, the show-off part, the idealistic part -- wants to jump right into HTML5 and make it work in IE, dammit! And the HTML5 shiv seems so simple -- I'm not really adding that much complexity, am I? I can keep it under control, can't I? ;)

A couple of years ago, idealism would have won. But experience breeds pragmatism. I'll need to see concrete benefits before I consider adding complexity.

CloudedVision

Well, to me, HTML5 makes everything simpler and more organized, especially the CSS. I'm not trying to be ahead of the pack, I'm trying to use technologies that make my developing faster and more efficient.

And surely Google Caffiene takes advantage of HTML5? Surely screen readers can still read tags they don't understand?

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Panthr - Web Design and Development

Mike Hopley

Specifically how? Is there something interesting I'm missing here, or do you just prefer writing nav {...} to div#nav {...} ?

Does it? In what way?

What do you mean by "read"? Read aloud to the user? They only do that for specific, recognised tags ("list of ten items...").

Or do you mean "read" as in "parse"? Well, I don't know. Probably they will treat any unrecognised tags as <span>s, or possibly <div>s -- which is to say, they will do nothing with the tag itself, but they will continue to parse anything inside it.

CloudedVision

Well, to me, <div> is sorta meaningless. I find it easier to read, edit, and organize HTML and CSS when the sections are not defined with divs, but tag such as header, nav, footer, etc.

HTML5 offers improved semantics, so it seems Caffiene would take advantage of that when crawling HTML5 websites.

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Panthr - Web Design and Development

Mike Hopley

Oh come on, how hard is it to read #nav {...} or <div id="nav">? You're making a mountain out of a molehill.


...but you don't actually know.

It's just as easy to postulate competing theories. For example: HTML5 is used by such a tiny percentage of web pages, it seems Google wouldn't waste effort incorporating it into their algorithms.

Gaz

I don't see any reason to be getting excited or even like HTML 5. It has been rushed and poorley thought out. might as well stick to XHTML 1