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HTML5 for Humans

20 Jan 2011

As content producers we are some of the most powerful people in the world, we can influence government, save people's lives in the case of a natural disaster, and communicate like we never have before.</p>

by Ben Schwarz

I love DOCTYPE HTML. I like how Modernizr does the job of identifying what features of html5 are supported in a specific browser. I think simplifying interfaces whenever possible is the best way to grow a healthier web (and internet). This morning while searching for high quality html5 docs, I hit upon a must read presentation.

Building a better web by Ben Schwarz

The HTML5 spec in it's native form is a bit of a monster at over 300,000 words. Thanks to some elbow grease and hard work by a number of contributors (Hixie and Mike Smith were referenced) a version of the spec specifically for web developers was paired down to about half the full spec's size. Ben Schwarz and Anthony Kolber made a great usability leap by reworking the layout for a human readable version of the HTML5 edition for web authors.

The following embed is a presentation Ben put together describing a few of his thoughts on web design along with some pointers. Cache manifests was my personal favorite up and coming feature. Manifests will provide offline functional feel to web apps much like couch(DB/apps). Make sure to fullscreen the presentation to read Ben's footnotes.

Building a better web</embed></p>
View more presentations from Ben Schwarz.

Here's the local storage video from slide 103
[iframe http://player.vimeo.com/video/16088275 500 285]
HTML5 localStorage demo from Ben Schwarz on Vimeo.

Props to Ben for delivering an epic slide deck complete with superb notes. Mr. Schwarz is also active on github and slapped together a nifty transcoder in ruby to handle various feed types (if you ever have need of one). He mentions that work in a blog post along with a tip of the hat to Evan Phoenix (of Rubinius) for his part in the solution.

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