HTML5 / CSS3 Background

Not everyone is, or needs to be, a technical fundi to use the internet. But as a business owner you should be aware of what the internet can do for you. So let's look where we now stand.

What is HTML?

• Simply put, HTML = HyperText Markup Language, or in simple terms it is the coding language that is universally used for editing of all website content.

What is CSS?

• CSS = Cascading Style Sheets are used to take care of all styling aspects, e.g. what fonts and font sizes are used, colours, page layout, and so on.

Both HTML and CSS have undergone very few changes over the years, the problem being that many people still use older browsers, and we cannot introduce new changes and in the process make our websites inaccessible to them. However the "powers that be" have been working to modernise and improve the language, and the latest standards have been available for quite some time.

Actually it is not so much a "standard" as a "recommendation" or in other words they say "Look Guys, this is how we recommend you set up your web page". Then it is up to the browser suppliers to support those recommendations so that we as users can see what the web designer intended us to see.

In fact, browser manufacturers are usually ahead of the game, and often implement new features before thay have even been accepted as part of the standard. With One Very Unfortunate Exception: Microsoft's Internet Explorer. For a number of years Microsoft stopped any browser development work. Yet, because it is built in as part of Windows, Internet Explorer is by far the most widely used browser in the world - and this has been a severe handicap to any web improvements.

Where do we stand today? A few salient facts:

• HTML5 and CSS3 recommendations are in a constant state of review, but they are available and contain many improvements over the older HTML4 / CSS2 recommendations.
• Many of the newer features are available in almost all modern browsers.
• Some of the newer features are available in Internet Explorer 9 but not in earlier versions.
• Unfortunately Windows XP users can only upgrade to IE8; and IE9 is not available to them.
• Windows users cannot remove or replace Internet Explorer, it is built in as part of the operating system.
• Nothing stops a Windows user from installing an addtional browser of their choice. They can even install more than one browser if they wish.
• HTML5 / CSS3 have been designed with backwards compatiblity in mind, so a website that is properly designed according to these recommendations will still be fully usable in older browsers, even though it may not look the same.

So what are these new features we've been talking about? Let's go on to the next page and have a look at some of them.