On The HTML5 Train

A full month without a post! Time is truly flying right now. On the personal side, I've been busy with helping to prepare for our little family as the arrival of the Little One(tm) is getting closer and closer...

And work-wise I've spent as much time as possible reading up on the new HTML5 and CSS3 features - and there are many.

On my more experimental site - Stories In Flight - I've started to create a whole section with small cheatsheets and tutorials around things in HTML5 that have caught my eyes:

• There is the master cheatsheet for HTML5 and CSS3, which gives you a good overview of some of the highlights like box shadows, rounded corners, SVG and Canvas tags.
• I've created a little tutorial around the basics of Ruby Annotations and there's also a suggestion of a practical use in language training.
• An exploration of CSS3 multiple background images and - rather a surprise - how this can be used quite efficiently for JavaScript animations. I will revisit this feature in the near future with several interesting new ideas...
• A quick look at the basic HTML5 audio tag, including a script solution that allows to easily create whole soundscapes with multiple channels of sound that will come in handy for JavaScript games.

The more I research all the new HTML5 features, the more excited I get for the future of interface engineering - after years of very little progress, where almost all interesting new interface developments came from the Flash side, we are now seeing a renaissance of HTML.

Yes, there will be browser incompatibilities, and yes, Flash will not go away, but I think we will be able to define a much better model where Flash will really only be used where it is necessary. No more reason to kill accessibility and SEO with Flash navigation elements.

We will see exciting new HTML websites exploding onto the scene, lightweight, accessible and kicking all kinds of visual butt.

I can't wait.