Html 5

[thejadedmonkey]

As a web developer, what exactly is HTML 5, and when will I need to know it? For example, does IE 7 support it? If a client asks me to make him(her) a site, about how long will I have to wait before I can use HTML 5 tags on the site?

And as an aside, once MS pushes IE7 to all users, will it be acceptable to make sites that don't "validate" on IE6?

 

[BugHunter]

Html 5

I think HTML 5 is still in the proposal stage, so no major browser supports it. As far as I can tell it just is a bunch of new tags that handle a few things we do manually now, such as <menu>.

Sadly even when MS pushes IE7 on everyone, Windows 2000 and 98 are stuck on IE6 and many corporations still use them.
I always say it's acceptable to not support browsers that don't follow specs, but clients which pay you money to make web pages might see things differently.

 

[Makosuke]

The bleeding edge version of Safari has support for some of the proposed stuff in HTML5, but I'll bet it's going to be several years before it's really to the point that much of it will be in regular use. I'd say it's pretty safe to more or less not worry about it until the spec is at least finalized.

As for IE7, I keep an eye on browser stats, and when IE6 drops below, say, 1%, I'm having a party and going to stop giving a crap about it. When that'll be, hard to say, but at the rate IE7 is spreading I'd say maybe two years, optimistically. I sure hope so, anyway.

Actually, I think it's reasonable to say when IE6 drops into the 2-3% range I'll stop caring if stuff looks good in it and just make sure it's not horribly ugly. IE5 is finally down into the quarter-percent range, so I've stopped bothering with it past an "ok, useable" level of glance.

 

[angelwatt]

In addition to the good comments so far. A number of companies (including mine) prohibit the use of IE7 because it breaks a number of web services the company provides. We can't use Vista either. So support for IE6 is still here for a few more years at least. Thankfully I use a Mac at work so don't have to worry about such issues.

 

[thejadedmonkey]

<insert obligatory remark about IE dying a slow and painful death>

I guess that's good to know that I don't have to learn anything new for a while..