What are you folks using HTML5 for?

Question

I am curious what you folks are doing with HTML5.
What do your clients want you to do with it?
Does Dreamweaver CS5 functionality suffice or do you have to complement it with handcoding or by using extensions?
I somehow have the impression that many HTML5 extensions are quite expensive.  I don't know if that really is the case.
J.S.
UltraSuite

Answer 1

pziecina wrote:
 Unfortunately the take-up of anything will always depend upon the user, the client and the designer/developer. The problem is similar to the use of css for layout vs's tables being used for layout, no matter what one does as long as the 'old' way of doing things is still supported, (and help is available when something goes wrong) then any arguments for doing it another way, (even if recommended and better) will always have its opponents.
I have no problem with the idea of using HTML5. Some parts of it are extremely useful, and should be adopted immediately. For example, the doctype is perfectly safe to use on any website, as are the new types of form input. The great advantage of using the date and number input types is that they're already supported by some browsers. Older browsers simply treat them as normal text input fields.
I'm less excited by the new semantic elements, because there's no support for them in any assistive technology. It's probably more effective to start using the WAI-ARIA role attributes first. I also think there's a lot of confusion about the way articles can be nested sections and vice-versa. I've done a lot of reading about this subject, and there seems to be little consensus about the most appropriate way of marking up documents. That's why I'm going to make haste slowly in that regard.
I have just finished reading Jeremy Keith's "HTML5 for Web Designers" published by A Book Apart. What struck me was the way he left the semantic elements to the end, and expressed similar doubts about their usage. Most other books and articles wax lyrical about how wonderfully semantic the web is going to be thanks to HTML5. I have my doubts. When I look at the daily procession of visitors to this forum who have no idea about paragraph tags, never mind divs or spans, I foresee websites constructed with a horrendous tag soup. That's not to say that the idea of semantic tags is bad. I'm just pessimistic about how they'll end up being used.
Now the normal argument. Users must see the same design across all browsers, well, how many normal users will look at a site on more than one browser? We may compare sites across browsers, but the average user, unless it is a comparison of the site on their pc with a site on a handheld/smartphone then probably never.
I think Andy Clarke has the right approach in his "Hardboiled Web Design". He sees the proliferation of mobile devices as the perfect opportunity to convince clients that it's impossible to make websites look exactly the same across all devices.
The really interesting developments at the moment are coming more from CSS3 than from HTML5.