The logo is a general-purpose visual identity for a broad set of open web technologies, including HTML5, CSS, SVG, WOFF, and others. In addition to the HTML5 logo there are icons for eight high level technology classes enabled by the HTML5 family of technologies. The icons can be used to highlight more specific abilities, such as offline, graphics, or connectivity.

I don’t think there’s much more to say really! We might look for a way to incorporate the logo into the site – it was nice of W3C to design it in out colour scheme…

As the last post mentioned HTML5 is still a work in progress for W3C and the various browser developers but what about Google and the other search engines? One of the major concerns of front end developers is the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) of any new website – will the search engines read the content correctly? Will it get ranked well for relevant keywords? A good front end developer and designer will take these elements into consideration when building a new site.

Something that I’ve been thinking about when coding this site into HTML5 was how will Google read the new code – will it see it as semantic markup and rank it accordingly? Or just see all those extra H1 tags as spam?

Well, it seems that Google isn’t yet set up to read HTML5, as it’s a work in progress and not yet a very popular coding technique they don’t seem to be reading it any differently to standard HTML websites. I found a couple of interesting quote on this site: www.seroundtable.com

In general, our crawlers are used to not being able to parse all HTML markup – be it from broken HTML, embedded XML content or from the new HTML5 tags. Our general strategy is to wait to see how content is marked up on the web in practice and to adapt to that. If we find that more and more content uses HTML5 markup, that this markup can give us additional information, and that it doesn’t cause problems if webmasters incorrectly use it (which is always a problem in the beginning), then over time we’ll attempt to work that into our algorithms. With that in mind, I definitely wouldn’t want to stand in the way of your implementing parts of your site with HTML5, but I also wouldn’t expect to see special treatment of your content due to the HTML5 markup at the moment. HTML5 is still very much a work in progress, so it’s great to see bleeding-edge sites making use of the new possibilities

Personally, I would recommend using HTML5 where you think that it already makes sense, perhaps reverting to HTML4 if you can determine that the browser won’t support the elements of HTML5 that you use properly. While this will not result in an advantage for your content in our search results, it generally wouldn’t be disadvantageous either.

So, does that answer the question? Not really but it’s a start! I think that as HTML5 grows in popularity and we get closer to a full specification from W3C the search engines will take more notice. I also think that a properly coded, semantic and accessible website will always have an advantage over a poorly coded site when it comes to SEO. There will always be hacks, changes in algorithms and spam techniques to improve SEO but for consistent ranking and low maintenence it’s best to create a site properly in the first place – whether you’re using HTML5 or not.

But, this site proves that the basic HTML5 code works so what’s all the fuss about? It seems that the functions that people like Apple are so keen to shout about are the ones that don’t yet work: the canvas function only works correctly in a few browsers (not IE or Firefox yet), the video and audio elements don’t have cross-browser compatibiility and the most popular browser on the planet still doesn’t have any core HTML5 functionality (even IE9 doesn’t conform to all the basic standards).

“The problem we’re facing right now is there is already a lot of excitement for HTML5, but it’s a little too early to deploy it because we’re running into interoperability issues,” including differences between video on devices, said the official, Philippe Le Hegaret, W3C interaction domain leader.

It’s been nearly 10 years since IE6 was launched and yet, as designers and front-end developers, we still have to construct workarounds and fixes to ensure that our sites work on it. I’ve recently been dealing with a large organisation that uses browser based software that the vendors will ONLY develop on IE6, still!

So, with many large companies and organisations still using Windows XP, the operating system that’s refusing to die, and with no hope of IE9 ever being installed as it only works on XP and above, it looks as though we’re going to have to write normal HTML and CSS for the foreseeable future. In fact, the W3C are giving the first official testing dates as mid-2011 and judging by their current rate of progress, maybe an official rollout in 2012 – 2013 we might not be able to fully support HTML5 development on all browsers and operating systems until 2015, without having to use hacks and javascript to fix any errors that might occur…

And finally, is it the end of Flash? Well… probably not. HTML5 Canvas looks good and the video and audio elements, when they work, should be excellent. But there are some things that Flash just does well – games and animations. I think for a true designer and animator HTML5 will always feel a bit clunky and Flash has everything needed right there: the design tools, the coding, music and sound effects import. Call me up in 5 years and remind me about this if I’m wrong!

Admittedly we don’t get a lot of traffic but I narrowed down the results to the last six weeks and here is the top ten:

1. Windows – 49.18%
2. Macintosh – 29.28%
3. iPad – 11.24%
4. iPhone – 5.18%
5. Linux – 2.47%
6. iPod – 1.31%
7. (not set) – 0.64%
8. Android – 0.59%
9. BlackBerry – 0.06%
10. Playstation 3 – 0.02%

I suppose it’s probably not too surprising that Apple early adopters are also likely to be interested in slightly more, shall we say, geeky topics of internet life. Adding up the figures there it shows in one form or another Apple products are sending 47.01% of all visitors to this site.

I hope it’s working alright on the iPad – please let me know if there’s something broken.

If anyone is wondering, I use an Android phone so that 0.59% could be a lot of me testing it out – and the HTML5 and CSS3 I’ve added to the site is working fine on there.

I’ve also started adding in a few CSS3 touches – this site is a bit of a test for me as well as a good resource of high quality HTML5 sites, tutorials and demos. Let me know if you see any errors with how I’m implementing the code, we’re all learning the best ways to use HTML5 and I’ll try aim to share my experience while I continue to improve and edit the site.

It’s taken a while as I’ve only had a little bit of free time to dedicate to it but it’s almost ready! I’m going to start moving the code over today so there might be a few bits of downtime as I transfer sections and test it all to make sure everything is working correctly…

What are the benefits?  Well the language is still being developed and probably will be for years, so a definitive list of benefits would be impossible to state right now, but there are many new elements, attributes and methods, take a look here for a bit more information.

Why build a showcase site for HTML5? We’ve been keeping an eye on the development of HTML5 and have seen some pretty neat sites come up and thought if we put them all in one place, it would help us and the global community to see what HTML5 can do!

Why isn’t our site in HTML5? Browser compatibility and technology is going to take a while to catch up, so we figured that we’d rather have everyone able to view our site correctly and have left it as XHTML 1.0 STRICT.  We are planning on building an alternative HTML5 site in the near future, so keep an eye out!

What use is 101 Best HTML5 Sites to me? If you see a site you like, submit it using our system and we can grow our showcase for the use of everyone.

Welcome to 101 Best HTML5 Sites!