The working draft of the HTML 5 standard was released a few days ago. HTML 4, the current standard, hasn’t really been reworked in 10 years - a long time in the relatively short lifespan of the modern web.
Much has changed since the early dot-com days of December 1997 when HTML 4 was published, as developers, designers and users have unlocked the web’s potential. Web sites have moved from being a collection of static pages to media-rich communities leveraging participation.
HTML 5 is designed to reflect this, with APIs for drawing two-dimensional graphics, embedding and controlling multimedia, managing client-side data storage and editing parts of documents. Turning to more bread-and-butter stuff, HTML 5 will also make it easier to represent familiar page elements. A full list of changes can be found here.
“Ajax and related innovations have propelled demands for a new standard that allows people to create web applications that interoperate across desktop and mobile,” the group said.
A drawing API? It will be interesting to see sites that use no graphics at all, just typography and browser-rendered graphics. Speedy. Though would this be regarded as presentational markup? - something we’ve been told to separate from our content? Either way, I don’t think we need to start making flashcards for the array of new tags just yet.
I was browsing the interweb and happened to chance upon this extraordinary website, advertising a highly advanced piece of technology, the “forget-me-not panties” (yes American).
Here’s a testimonial as featured on the site:
David:
“When my daughter hit puberty I nearly had a heart attack. She started looking like a woman and suddenly she was wearing revealing clothing and staying out late with her friends.
Rather than become an over-protective parent , I decided to try forget-me-not panties™.
They work wonderfully. My wife and I bought our Sarah several pairs so we can watch her around the clock, and if we see her temperature rising too high, we intervene by calling her cellphone or just picking her up wherever she is. My only comment is it would be great to have a video camera, maybe you can work that into V.2.
Thanks forget-me-not panties™, now we have true peace of mind.”
In 2002, when my friend James Kelly and I started building web sites forged with the table and the spacer gif, we often looked to the greats of that time for inspiration. One thing that seemed unanimous across these sites was their choice of hosting; they all sported the ‘hosted by (mt)’ logo. It was the wide spread adoption by these design-focused companies that has given mediatemple it’s reputation, least in my mind. Back then, our sites were hobbies, learning experiences, or for favours & friends. We would never have needed, nor afforded such hosting requirements.
Given this humble anecdote, it’s surprising that 5 years on I find myself transferring the sites we manage to a mediatemple dedicated virtual (dv) server.
I’ve just been checking out the BBC’s new on demand TV service, iPlayer, due for launch later on this year, whilst reading I discovered iPlayer would not be available for the Mac. After being informed of this I went to have a little look at Channel 4’s similar service, 4od, this has been running since December 2006, and is not available on the Mac.
Quite ironically on the homepage for 4od, is a large advert for the Peep show, with Mitchell and Webb who have just appeared in the latest Mac adverts!
I’m also pretty sure Apple can’t be too happy with the BBC calling their new service iPlayer!
After further investigation I found that this unavailability is due to copyright issues, as Apple refuse to license their FairPlay DRM (Digital Rights Management) copy rights protection to third parties, meaning broadcasters will be open to copyright abuse if they allow Mac users access. For more info go to vnunet.
I have always been a Windows man, using a Mac occasionally, but never enough to get hooked. I’m the same with mobile phones, I always go back to the Nokia after trying and testing other mobile phone operating systems. I recently brought a Mac book with the intention of running Windows. When the Mac book arrived I installed Windows alongside OSX, but made a conscious decision to at least try OSX for a trial period… as I did buy a Mac!
I can now officially say the trial period is over and I’m still on OSX… and loving it! I had a few initial problems/worries with the change over, Nokia not writing OSX software for their connecting package for example, but this is something I got over very easily when I discovered iSync. I still can’t sync directly with entourage, as I used to do with outlook express, but I don’t think that’s the end of the world! (but if anyone can help with that I’d be grateful).
Hooray!!! The long awaited CS3 set to be launched at a special party in New York at the end of the month.
Speculators are saying that the possible applications might be: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks marking the first truly integrated suite since Adobe bought Macromedia.
Check out this six color/product teaser video.
Intel Mac owners rejoice!
Strap this crazy device to your finger and you can easily control your mouse movements. It works on almost all surfaces except reflective glass; like most. the big down side to this device is it still runs on a usb cable.
Pick it up from Xoxide or visit Logisys to find a different online retailer selling the finger mouse for around $20.
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World famous blog from the Substrakt creative team.
