The Road Ahead

Abstract

There are many fringes to HTML5, areas that are still being molded and sculpted toward a standard perfection, but to a large degree the road ahead has less to do with HTML5 and more to do with where HTML5 will be used. It is a connected world, and more people are connected via cellular phones than desktop computers. In the years ahead, Internet-enabled smartphones will likely spread to the masses, like low-end “dumb” mobile phones did years ago,¹ and the Web will have visitors who are on the move, surfing web pages on crowded buses, on street corners, in cafés, in restaurants, and, dare I say it, in movie theaters. Mobile devices offer special challenges for you, the web developer/designer. The screen resolution is more complicated, and the screen real estate is more confined, but with a helping hand from CSS3, HTML5 is well supported on contemporary smartphones. What you learned from prior chapters applies here, albeit things may be a little slower and there is a smaller screen area to work with, but those are the design challenges to work around, and they are counterbalanced by the unique possibilities of the mobile space. This chapter will discuss those challenges and possibilities and finish with a discussion of some last corners of the HTML5 specification.

Keywords

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