Tag: web standards

“HTML5 Up and Running”– Only $9.99 Today!

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date August 20, 2010

Want to get started developing sites and web applications that run on all modern browsers, including the upcoming Internet Explorer 9? You’ll need HTML 5 (along with CSS 3 and JavaScript) and a handy guide like Mark Pilgrim’s new book, HTML5 Up and Running.

If Mark’s name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s written all sorts of great guides, from Dive Into Python to Dive Into Accessibility to Dive into Greasemonkey to Greasemonkey Hacks, and much of his work is available as both for-pay books and free books off his website.

Today and today only (Friday, August 20, 2010), you can get the ebook version (PDF, ePub and mobi) of HTML5 Up and Running for just USD$9.99 (it normally goes for USD$23.99). Just go to the HTML5 Up and Running page in the O’Reilly site, order the ebook and use the discount code DDHUR when you check out!

(And while you’re at it, take the latest platform preview of the HTML5-ready Internet Explorer 9!)

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Tags books, discount codes, HTML 5, HTML5, Mark Pilgrim, web standards

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New Internet Explorer 9 Videos

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date August 9, 2010
1 Comment on New Internet Explorer 9 Videos

If you haven’t tried the latest Platform Preview of Internet Explorer 9, get your hands on it now! This one’s got new goodies like a new SVG engine, the “Chakra” JavaScript engine now integrated into the browser instead of a separate object called via COM, better Acid3 (95/100) and WebKit SunSpider scores.

Channel 9 has posted some videos on this newest version of IE9, and I thought I’d share them here:

A Look at the New IE Test Drive Samples

This video (2 minutes, 43 seconds in length) shows off some of the new demo apps on the IE Test Drive page that show off the benefits of IE9’s hardware acceleration. Rob Mauceri, Group Program Manager for Internet Explorer, narrates.

Can’t see the video? Download Silverlight or grab the video in MP4, MP3, WMA, WMV, WMV (High) or Zune formats.

A Look at SVG in IE9

SVG is short for "Scalable Vector Graphics", whose specification is an open standard and supported by all major modern web browsers, including IE9. This video (4 minutes, 36 seconds in length) shows how you can take advantage of SVG and the fact that it’s hardware-accelerated in IE9. Patrick Dengler, Senior Program Manager for Internet Explorer, does the presentation.

Can’t see the video? Download Silverlight or grab the video in MP4, MP3, WMA, WMV, WMV (High) or Zune formats.

IE9 Rocks HTML5 Audio Support

IE Beatz is a drum machine app written JavaScript, SVG and HTML 5 audio to demonstrate the combined power of HTML 5 and IE9. This video (6 minutes, 4 seconds) features IE Beatz’ creator, Josh Rose of the IE9 team, explaining his creation and showing some of the underlying code.

Can’t see the video? Download Silverlight or grab the video in MP4, MP3, WMA, WMV, WMV (High) or Zune formats.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Tags browsers, hardware acceleration, HTML 5, IE, IE9, Internet Explorer, same markup, SVG, Video, web standards

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Dive Into HTML 5

If you’ve decided to learn HTML 5 and are looking for a good introduction, I can’t think of a better starting point than Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into HTML 5. If Mark’s name rings a bell, it’s probably because you’ve heard of his books Dive Into Python and Dive Into Accessibility. As you can see, he’s taken a theme and he’s running with it.

Dive Into HTML 5 covers a number of topics, including:

A quite biased history of HTML 5. Not necessary for HTML 5 development, but if you’re the sort of person that likes to know the “back story”, Mark covers it quite nicely.
Detecting HTML 5 features. Your web apps will need to know if the browser they’re running in supports specific HTML 5 features, and this chapter covers that.
What the various tags (especially the new ones) mean.
Drawing on the <canvas>. Now supported in IE9!
The <video> element. Also supported in IE9!
Geolocation.
Local storage. Native client apps have had this as an advantage over web apps, but not anymore!
Forms.
Microdata.
and coming soon: chapters on threads and web sockets.

Mark has a knack for explaining things, so I’m always happy to point people to his books. I consider Dive Into HTML 5 to be pretty comprehensive; you could create a course based solely on the material in this book, and thanks to the licensing, you can!

Dive Into HTML 5 is available for free online and is a work in progress. It seems to be largely complete with only a couple of missing chapters, and when it’s done, it’ll be available in a couple of forms:

For free, online
For money, in the form of an O’Reilly book

As with Dive Into Python and Dive Into Accessibility, Dive Into HTML 5 is published under a Creative Commons “By” 3.0 license. You can freely share the contents of the book and even take it and adapt it any way you please: into your presentations, into a lecture or blog article series, or even your own book on HTML 5 – as long as you give Mark credit for creating the original work.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Tags books, HTML 5, Mark Pilgrim, web, web standards

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IE’s Big Leap Forward

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date June 28, 2010

"nine" spelled using the IE logo for the "e" Peter-Paul “ppk” Koch writes in his blog, QuirksBlog (which lives on his site, QuirksMode):

In the past few days I’ve been revising the CSS compatibility table with information about the latest crop of browsers. There’s no doubt about it: this is IE9’s show. It just supports nearly everything. No hassle, no buts.

…

Microsoft has finally taken the big leap forward we’ve been waiting for ever since they announced their decision to restart IE development back in 2005.

IE9 promises to be an excellent browser. Its CSS support is now at par with that of the other browsers — although each browser still has its specific areas where it performs less. But we cannot in good faith say that IE is behind the others any more.

In the article, he does a run-down of CSS selectors and finds that the upcoming IE9 does an excellent job of supporting them.

Go take IE9 for a spin – download Platform Preview 3 and try it out – and make sure to try your hand at CSS 3 as well!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Tags browsers, CSS, CSS 3, HTML 5, IE, IE9, Internet Explorer, Microsoft's Sea Change, Peter-Paul Koch, ppk, web, web standards

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HTML5 and RIAs: Friends with Benefits!

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date June 11, 2010
1 Comment on HTML5 and RIAs: Friends with Benefits!

Earlier this week, I was asked to make a short video that would be shown during a round table discussion on a hot topic: HTML5 vs. proprietary rich internet app technologies, such as Flash and Silverlight. My video was supposed to take the “RIAs complement HTML” side of the debate, while someone else would produce a video taking the “HTML5 trumps RIAs” side.

My own personal belief is that HTML5 – actually the stack of HTML5, CSS3 and Java/ECMAScript – has closed the interactivity gap between the web and desktop apps and will continue to close it. However, for the time being, there are still cases where HTML5 just can’t cut it – for various reasons, such as performance, browser compatibility or designer-friendliness – and that’s where RIAs shine. Hence I found it rather easy to put together an amusing little video titled HTML5 and RIAs: Friends with Benefits (5:47, YouTube).

I did the production work on Tuesday afternoon and evening using the following tools:

LifeChat LX-3000 headset as my microphone
Audacity to record and edit the audio
Fireworks to edit the pictures
Camtasia Studio to build and produce the video
Silvetta piano accordion for the music

Enjoy the video!

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

Tags Flash, HTML, HTML5, RIAs, rich internet applications, Siverlight, Video, web, web standards