HTML5

Periodic Table of the Elements - HTML5 Elements that is...

So, today I started looking at HTML5.  Late, yes, yes I know, very very late.  However…it hasn’t been finalized yet, so I am not that late.  Anywho, in looking up information about this latest iteration of HTML specifications, I came across an excellent site that had this absolutely nifty lil Periodic Table of the Elements.  You can view the interactive table at http://joshduck.com/periodic-table.html.  Josh, you did a beautiful thing!  This thing is truly wonderful.

Moving on.  So tonight I have a conversation with my partner in crime about this, and of course I send him the link to the table and we chat on gmail IM while reviewing these things.  There are several WTF moments.  Breaking old habits is hard, and remembering the over-sized wall poster of the HTML elements of days gone by, reduced to this lovely lil table, well….it has its comical moments.

There was the biggest WTF over the <rp> tag, described as “Contains semantically meaningless markup for browsers that don’t understand ruby annotations.”  Huh?  Ok, maybe because it was 1am…can we use that as an excuse to really see no purpose for this?  After continued perusal, he…the ever present comic relief throws out…

I Am <legend>

Seriously, I think I cracked up loud enough to wake up a block.  Granted, we are a couple of geeks, and that was a totally epic geek moment, but yeah, funny!

But in all seriousness, from what I have read so far about HTML5, I am very excited about implementing it.  The structure is excellent, and I do believe it will greatly help in defining the overwhelming amount of information that is presented on the web.  I can definitely see real potential here, and am glad for the changes.  And yes, I am very happy to see a neat lil table in use versus the huge wall poster