Web Professional Trends for 2013 – “HTML5 and CSS3” Interview with Charles Wyke-Smith, CEO at Bublish
In this ten minute interview Charles Wyke-Smith, CEO at Bublish and author of Stylin’ with CSS” and various others from Charleston, South Carolina, we learn about Charles’s perspective on the topic of Web Professional Trends for 2013 as it relates to HTML5, CSS3 and monetization for Web professionals.
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Specifically we learn:
• Advances in HTML5 and CSS3
• How the web is becoming more application like
• How the Browsers are becoming more capable
• About how API’s in HTML5 like Geo location, local storage, audio and vide are improving and eliminating the need for downloadable applications
• How HTML5 will provide additional revenue opportunities for application designers and developers by providing direct access to the market
• Benefits of learning on “the front end” that will allow Web professionals to focus on the User Experience
•That it’s an exciting time to be a Web professional
•How the Web is maturing to become the “Web 3.0” according to Charles, is Web 2.0 plus revenue
•Availability of all of the APIs
•How to build a core value by focusing your business
•About the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG)
•More about Charles Wyke-Smith, his new books and all of his great resources
More about HTML5
HTML5 is a markup language for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web and a core technology of the Internet. It is the fifth revision of the HTML standard (created in 1990 and standardized as HTML4 as of 1997) and, as of December 2012, is still under development. Its core aims have been to improve the language with support for the latest multimedia while keeping it easily readable by humans and consistently understood by computers and devices (web browsers, parsers, etc.). HTML5 is intended to subsume not only HTML 4, but XHTML 1 and DOM Level 2 HTML as well.
Following its immediate predecessors HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1, HTML5 is a response to the observation that the HTML and XHTML in common use on the World Wide Web are a mixture of features introduced by various specifications, along with those introduced by software products such as web browsers, those established by common practice, and the many syntax errors in existing web documents. It is also an attempt to define a single markup language that can be written in either HTML or XHTML syntax. It includes detailed processing models to encourage more interoperable implementations; it extends, improves and rationalises the markup available for documents, and introduces markup and application programming interfaces (APIs) for complex web applications. For the same reasons, HTML5 is also a potential candidate for cross-platform mobile applications. Many features of HTML5 have been built with the consideration of being able to run on low-powered devices such as smartphones and tablets. In December 2011 research firm Strategy Analytics forecast sales of HTML5 compatible phones will top 1 billion in 2013.
In particular, HTML5 adds many new syntactic features. These include the new video, audio and canvas elements, as well as the integration of scalable vector graphics (SVG) content (that replaces the uses of generic object tags) and MathML for mathematical formulas. These features are designed to make it easy to include and handle multimedia and graphical content on the web without having to resort to proprietary plugins and APIs. Other new elements, such as section, article, header and nav, are designed to enrich the semantic content of documents. New attributes have been introduced for the same purpose, while some elements and attributes have been removed. Some elements, such as a, cite and menu have been changed, redefined or standardized. The APIs and document object model (DOM) are no longer afterthoughts, but are fundamental parts of the HTML5 specification. HTML5 also defines in some detail the required processing for invalid documents so that syntax errors will be treated uniformly by all conforming browsers and other user agents.
History
The Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) began work on the new standard in 2004. At that time, HTML 4.01 had not been updated since 2000, and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was focusing future developments on XHTML 2.0. In 2009, the W3C allowed the XHTML 2.0 Working Group’s charter to expire and decided not to renew it. W3C and WHATWG are currently working together on the development of HTML5.
While HTML5 is often compared to Flash, the two technologies are very different. Both include features for playing audio and video within web pages, and for using Scalable Vector Graphics. HTML5 on its own cannot be used for animation and interactivity – it must be supplemented with CSS3 or Javascript. There are many Flash capabilities that have no direct counterpart in HTML5. See Comparison of HTML5 and Flash.
Although HTML5 has been well known among web developers for years, it became the topic of mainstream media around April 2010 after Apple Inc’s then-CEO Steve Jobs issued a public letter titled “Thoughts on Flash” where he concludes that “[Adobe] Flash is no longer necessary to watch video or consume any kind of web content” and that “new open standards created in the mobile era, such as HTML5, will win”. This sparked a debate in web development circles where some suggested that while HTML5 provides enhanced functionality, developers must consider the varying browser support of the different parts of the standard as well as other functionality differences between HTML5 and Flash. In early November 2011 Adobe announced that it will discontinue development of Flash for mobile devices and reorient its efforts in developing tools utilizing HTML 5.
More about CSS3
According to CSS3.info, CSS3 is the new kid in the stylesheet family. It offers exciting new possibilities to create an impact with your designs, allows you to use more diverse style sheets for a variety of occasions and lots more.
According to Wikipedia, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation semantics (the look and formatting) of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML and XHTML, but the language can also be applied to any kind of XML document, including plain XML, SVG and XUL.
CSS is designed primarily to enable the separation of document content (written in HTML or a similar markup language) from document presentation, including elements such as the layout, colors, and fonts. This separation can improve content accessibility, provide more flexibility and control in the specification of presentation characteristics, enable multiple pages to share formatting, and reduce complexity and repetition in the structural content (such as by allowing for tableless web design). CSS can also allow the same markup page to be presented in different styles for different rendering methods, such as on-screen, in print, by voice (when read out by a speech-based browser or screen reader) and on Braille-based, tactile devices. It can also be used to allow the web page to display differently depending on the screen size or device on which it is being viewed. While the author of a document typically links that document to a CSS style sheet, readers can use a different style sheet, perhaps one on their own computer, to override the one the author has specified.
CSS specifies a priority scheme to determine which style rules apply if more than one rule matches against a particular element. In this so-called cascade, priorities or weights are calculated and assigned to rules, so that the results are predictable.
The CSS specifications are maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Internet media type (MIME type) text/css is registered for use with CSS by RFC 2318 (March 1998), and they also operate a free CSS validation service.
CSS has a simple syntax and uses a number of English keywords to specify the names of various style properties.
A style sheet consists of a list of rules. Each rule or rule-set consists of one or more selectors, and a declaration block. A declaration-block consists of a list of declarations in braces. Each declaration itself consists of a property, a colon (:), and a value. If there are multiple declarations in a block, a semi-colon (;) must be inserted to separate each declaration.
In CSS, selectors are used to declare which part of the markup a style applies to, a kind of match expression. Selectors may apply to all elements of a specific type, to elements specified by attribute, or to elements depending on how they are placed relative to, or nested within, others in the document tree.
Pseudo-classes are used in CSS selectors to permit formatting based on information that is outside the document tree. An often-used example of a pseudo-class is :hover, which identifies content only when the user ‘points to’ the visible element, usually by holding the mouse cursor over it. It is appended to a selector as in a:hover or #elementid:hover. A pseudo-class classifies document elements, such as :link or :visited, whereas a pseudo-element makes a selection that may consist of partial elements, such as :first-line or :first-letter.
Selectors may be combined in many ways, especially in CSS 2.1, to achieve great specificity and flexibility.
Unlike CSS 2, which is a large single specification defining various features, CSS 3 is divided into several separate documents called “modules”. Each module adds new capabilities or extends features defined in CSS 2, over preserving backward compatibility. Work on CSS level 3 started around the time of publication of the original CSS 2 recommendation. The earliest CSS 3 drafts were published in June 1999. Due to the modularization, different modules have different stability and statuses. As of June 2012, there are over fifty CSS modules published from the CSS Working Group., and four of these have been published as formal recommendations.
More about Charles Wyke-Smith
According to his Linkedin page, Charles Wyke-Smith is a creative media professional focused on developing enterprise online SaaS applications and web sites that provide excellent user experience and quantifiable ROI.
Charles has consulted and developed online applications, web sites and multimedia for Palm, Wells Fargo, ESPN Videogames UCSF, and Benefitfocus, and have held VP and other senior positions for online companies.
The third edition of “Stylin’ with CSS” will be published in Summer 2012. The first two editions have sold over 30,000 copies. “Scriptin’ with JavaScript and Ajax” was published 2009. and “Codin’ for the Web” in 2006, all on the New Riders imprint of Peachpit Books. The second edition of Stylin’ was published in December of 2007.
He’s a regular conference presenter on the topics of web design and user experience at events such as SXSW (South by South West) and my publisher’s twice-yearly Voices That Matter web design conference.
I take great pride in combining business skill, design flair, marketing acumen, and programming abilities to deliver powerful online business solutions says Charles.
Next move: Solving the problem of book discovery in a disrupted marketplace.
Specialties
Leadership in online application and corporate web development, with deep knowledge of business management, venture funding, user experience, interface design, information architecture, and content management systems. Can define and manage online application development processes to design new and innovative products, and can lead design and tech teams in to develop projects in Java, ASP.NET and open source languages. Can program PHP, HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, jQuery and more.
A special shout out to Charles Wyke-Smith, a super nice and gracious guy for taking the time to talk with us!