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HTML5 is available and ready to use today. [...] the really important HTML5 date is October 2009. This is the last call for the HTML5 working draft.
I have been waiting for the HTML5 'starting gun' to be fired for a long time (ever since I learned that given IE's inability to correctly serve XHTML, my site would be better off marked up in HTML 4.01 Strict than XHTML 1.0 Strict).
So... is this it?!
I, for one, will be happy to swap:
<script type="text/javascript" ... >
<style type="text/css" ...>
for
<script ...> [defaults to javascript]
<style ...> [defaults to css]
And... what's that? New HTML5 javascript APIs? 'Drag and drop'? 'Inline editing'? 'Offline apps'?
Is there anyone here already using:
<article>, <aside>, <header>, <footer>, <nav>, <section>, <details>, <figure>, <mark>, <time>, <audio>, <video>, <canvas>
and all the other available toys?
I'm ready to start re-writing my templates. Anyone else?
One of my clients has standardised on Firefox, so we can already use some new HTML5 stuff for staff-only backoffice pages.
For markup formatting, you can use <!DOCTYPE html> (triggers standards mode in current browsers), remove xmlns declarations from legacy XHTML pages, omit optional tags (if you want to) today. I think you could probably use bare <script> and <style> tags too.
There's an HTML5 validator and an implementation of the HTML5 parsing algorithm is being tested in nightly builds of Firefox (SVG! SVG! SVG!). Opera and webkit also support some HTML5 features like <canvas>, <video>, new form elements, etc. As usual IE is and will continue to be the problem.
What is the impact of HTML5 on search engines?
Not much, I'd imagine. HTML5 is designed to be backwards compatible. The only potential problem would be SE's doing something funny with new elements, but Google is fully committed to HTML5: they employ Ian Hickson to work on the spec, and already publish some of their pages as HTML5.
Progress ...
