It’s probably worth noting that before this morning I had no major interest in the new HTML/CSS standards. I have accepted that I will learn coding for the web as and when I need to, though I find myself becoming more engrossed with the changes and updates the more I read..
Web standards have a habit of changing.
If you take a look at websites from 8 years ago, you’ll notice that things have changed a lot. We’ve gone from tables to divs, we’ve added CSS style sheets and now we’re starting to rely on flash much less in web design. Things are looking rosey.
The fact that I started making amateur websites back in the days of D-HTML and the dawn of geocities makes me feel really old for starters, but I concede; things are changing for the better.
Having only recently adopted coding for the web in a serious capacity, through my work and through necessity, I consider myself lucky to be learning as this gradual change takes place.
So what will change?
As far as consumers and casual web browsers are concerned, very little. You may notice increased functionality on your mobile devices due to CSS3 and jQuery now taking on many of the basic animation tasks in which Flash was originally integrated.
Whilst this may or may not have been a forced move after Apple refused to support flash via their infinitely popular iPhone and their new iPad is irrelevant. The fact that we now have simple code to perform what previously required a specialist software (and knowledge of that software) is a step in the right direction. There is no doubt that this will benefit casual web users along with mobile web users.
Although CCS level 3 has not yet been recommended by WC3 yet, we can still use some of the features available including animation functions and generated rounded edges, which most new browsers already support. Opacity is also supported, using RGBa (where a = alpha). A useful alternative to using .png images for partial transparency?
And what about HTML 5.0?
Well, I’m still looking in to that. From what I can see though, most of the new tags seem to be declarative. Such as ‘Footer’ or ‘Header’ are used to declare sections of a website, presumably to address key content and improve Search Engine Optimization.
I’m fairly certain that the new standards will gradually become slightly more obvious as browser compatibility rises with new updates. I think for most people however, the changes will be subtle.
I’m looking forward to stepping up my game over the coming year.
Related resources..