DeviceAtlas & HTML5

HTML5 is the brand new version of HTML, which contains a number of differences to it’s predecessor.

So what is HTML5?

If this is the first you’ve heard of HTML5 (or even if you know quite a bit already), you really should take a look at this excellent guide: Dive Into HTML5. It gives a very clear walkthrough of all of the new features, and how to use them.
It’s an excellent resource, particularly for developers looking to do device detection and content adaptation, but unfortunately it’s not everything we need. As stated on the site, it …seeks to elaborate on a hand-picked selection of features from the HTML5 specification…

HTML5 Demos provides some excellent (advanced) demos and examples, but again focuses more on the new ‘magic’ features of HTML5.

That said, HTML5 is more than just <video> & <audio> – it details a whole new approach to content and its layout, using new tags such as: <nav>, <article>, <section>, <header> & <footer>; this in turn implies that developers (and site owners) now care about structure & content in a deeper, fuller way than before.
A quick scan down the excellent HTML5 reference chart on W3Schools will show what I’m talking about regarding the number of new elements (ie: not just the multimedia ones).

This is, without a doubt, the most important thing for mobile development since (shameless plug 🙂 ) DeviceAtlas. It has the potential to blow almost every single concept for development and design out of the water, simply through the changes in the approaches used that it inspires.

How does DeviceAtlas fit into all of this?

DeviceAtlas is a device detection & capability system. It tells you what device is accessing your service(s), and what that device is capable of.
You don’t want to serve Flash content to an Apple device, just like you don’t want to serve massive pages of text to users on a Nokia e65; on that note, it doesn’t matter if the device is capable of receiving the content, does the user actually need a thesis, or are they looking for a telephone number?

HTML5 opens the door to a pretty big list of new features, and we believe that DeviceAtlas should include them.

How can I help?

There are a number of possible ways in which DeviceAtlas can cater HTML5 capability data, for example:

1. Include a single property for each and every new HTML5 feature
2. Group similar properties together, assuming that every property within that group is supported, if the boolean = true
3. Restrict HTML5 support to the list of new ‘magic’ capabilities (including <video>, <audio> ….)

We’ve always been open with our dealings with developers and designers alike, and while we have our own thoughts regarding this, we would like to gather some more ideas from the community at large in order to try to reach some sort of consensus; every single addition makes a difference.

So, what’s important to you when it comes to HTML5 device detection?
Let me know in the comments, and let’s see if we can hammer something out 🙂

Daniel