We currently have no means to provide information about what’s happening or being said in the video, which means the video isn’t very accessible and the user can’t easily navigate to a particular section of the video. Thankfully, there’s a new format specification in the works called WebVTT (Web Video Text Tracks). As of now, it’s only in the WHATWG spec, but the recently established W3C Web Media Text Tracks Community Group should introduce a WebVTT spec to the W3C soon.

You may recall a similar format called WebSRT (Web Subtitle Resource Tracks) that was recently under discussion. WebSRT was renamed to, and has been replaced by, WebVTT.

A WebVTT (.vtt) file is simply plain text containing several types of information about the video:

Subtitles

The transcription or translation of the dialogue.

Captions

Similar to subtitles, but may also include sound effects and other audio information.

Descriptions

Intended to be a separate text file that describes the video through a screenreader.

Chapters

Intended to help the user navigate through the video.

Metadata

Information and content about the video, which isn’t intended to be displayed to the viewer by default, though you may wish to do so using JavaScript.

This article will mostly be talking about subtitles and captions, but it will briefly touch on chapters too.

Beyond the scope of this article but worth mentioning is the text track API, which, amongst other things, denotes how many text tracks there are and which ones have loaded and are ready for use. If you have used this API, let us know.

WEBVTT

<video width="640" height="480" controls>
  <source src="video.mp4" type="video/mp4" />
  <source src="video.webm" type="video/webm" />
  <track src="subtitles.vtt" kind="subtitles" srclang="en" label="English" />
  <!-- fallback for rubbish browsers -->
</video>

WEBVTT

1
00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:10.000
This is the first line of text, displaying from 1-10 seconds

2
00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:20.000
And the second line of text
separated over two lines

1
00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:10.000
Never gonna give you up <00:00:01.000> Never gonna let you down <00:00:05.000> Never gonna run around and desert you

Styling Options #

The previous examples specify the minimum configuration you need for subtitling and captioning, but you can style your captions too. Let’s start with the cue settings, which are done on the same line as the time settings:

D:vertical / D:vertical-lr

Display the text vertically rather than horizontally. This also specifies whether the text grows to the left (vertical) or to the right (vertical-lr).

L:X / L:X%

Either a number or a percentage. If a percentage, then it is the position from the top of the frame. If a number, this represents what line number it will be.

T:X%

The position of the text horizontally on the video. T:100% would place the text on the right side of the video.

A:start / A:middle / A:end

The alignment of the text within its box – start is left-aligned, middle is centre-aligned, and end is right-aligned.

S:X%

The width of the text box as a percentage of the video width.

To make use of these settings, put them alongside the time settings, like this:

00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:10.000 A:middle T:50%
00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:10.000 A:end D:vertical
00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:10.000 A:start T:100% L:0%

which would result in something like the following:

Along with the above cue settings, you can use inline styles for text:

Bold text

<b>Lorem ipsum</b>

Italic text

<i>dolor sit amet</i>

Underlined text

<u>consectetuer adipiscing</u>

Ruby text

<ruby>見<rt>み</rt></ruby>

You can even apply a CSS class to a section of text using <c.myClass>Lorem ipsum</c>, giving us many more styling options.

Finally, you can add a declaration representing the name of the voice: <v Tom>Hello world</v>. This declaration accomplishes three things:

1. The caption will display the voice (Tom) in addition to the caption text.
2. The name of the voice can be read by a screenreader, possibly event using a different voice for male or female names.
3. It offers a hook for styling so that, for example, all captions for Tom could be in blue.

Chapters

You can provide a chapter list for the video the same way you would provide subtitles or captions. Start with the same WEBVTT declaration, and then for each cue, declare the chapter number, the start and stop times, and the chapter title:

<track src="chapters.vtt" kind="chapters" srclang="en" />

WEBVTT

Chapter 1
00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:10.000>
Introduction to HTML5

Video Subtitling and WebVTT originally appeared on HTML5 Doctor on November 29, 2011.

Here is what the spec has to say about <details>:

The details element represents a disclosure widget from which the user can obtain additional information or controls.

Essentially, we can use <details> to create an accordion-like widget that the user can toggle open and closed. Inside <details>, we can put any sort of content we want.

Browser support

Before we go any further, you should know that currently, only Chrome supports the <details> element. Opera will support it soon, but in the meantime we’ll have to use some polyfills. So fire up Chrome and let’s take a peek.

Using <details>

There are two relevant elements here: <details> and, optionally, <summary>. <details> is the wrapper for all the content we want to show and hide, and <summary> contains the — well, the summary and title of the section. Technically we don’t need the <summary>. If absent, the browser will use some default text (in Chrome: “details”). Let’s have a look at some markup:

<details>
  <summary>Show/Hide me</summary>
  <p>Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.</p>
</details>

You can see this in action over at jsbin. It’s a simple example, but it shows off the toggle effect nicely. All this without JavaScript!

The open attribute

In the example above, the content is hidden when the page loads. We can make it visible by default by adding the boolean open attribute to the <details> element (jsbin example):

<details open>
  <summary>Show/Hide me</summary>
  <p>Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas.</p>
</details>

There is no closed attribute. It’s the default, so by omitting open, you imply closed.

The <summary> element

We’ve briefly seen <summary> in action. Since it is phrasing content, we can use inline elements such as <span> or <strong> inside it. Why thought would we do this? Perhaps for an extra styling hook or as the spec suggests: a label for a form element. At least it would be handy if it worked properly when implemented:

<details>
  <summary><label for="name">Name:</label></summary>
  <input type="text" id="name" name="name" />
</details>

Normally, clicking anywhere on the summary reveals the content of the <details> element. But in this example, clicking the summary doesn’t reveal the content because you’re actually clicking the <label>, which then focuses the <input> element — even though it’s hidden by the collapsed <details> element.

Clearly this needs addressing, what do you think should happen? Maybe any browser vendors reading this can take a look

Nesting multiple <details> elements

You can nest <details> within <details> if you like, as seen in this perfectly valid example:

<details>
  <summary>Question 1</summary>
  <p><strong>Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique</strong> senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. Vestibulum tortor quam, feugiat vitae, ultricies eget, tempor sit amet, ante. Donec eu libero sit amet quam egestas semper. <em>Aenean ultricies mi vitae est.</em> Mauris placerat eleifend leo. Quisque sit amet est et sapien ullamcorper pharetra. Vestibulum erat wisi, condimentum sed, <code>commodo vitae</code>, ornare sit amet, wisi. Aenean fermentum, elit eget tincidunt condimentum, eros ipsum rutrum orci, sagittis tempus lacus enim ac dui. <a href="#">Donec non enim</a> in turpis pulvinar facilisis. Ut felis.</p>
  <details>
    <summary>Related documents</summary>
    <ul>
      <li><a href="#">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,  consectetuer adipiscing elit.</a></li>
      <li><a href="#">Aliquam tincidunt mauris eu  risus.</a></li>
      <li><a href="#">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,  consectetuer adipiscing elit.</a></li>
      <li><a href="#">Aliquam tincidunt mauris eu  risus.</a></li>
    </ul>
  </details>
</details>

Example uses

So when could you use <details>? FAQs immediately spring to mind. People often use accordions for FAQs anyway, so they’re a great candidate for <details>.

Also consider a table of contents. It could be a fixed area that scrolls with the content. Something like this perhaps?

You could use <details> to toggle the comments section of a blog, member profiles, details of a download, complex forms, or in web applications as shown in this example from the spec:

In fact, just looking around WordPress as I write, I see plenty of opportunities to use <details>. Let us know your thoughts and ideas in the comments.

Styling

How can we style this thing? Well, to style the disclosure widget itself in WebKit, you can apply some CSS to the pseudo-class ::-webkit-details-marker. You can see a little demo here:

details summary::-webkit-details-marker {
  background: red;
  color: #fff;
  font-size: 500%;
}

We can also position the disclosure widget (to an extent). Here it is floated right. That’s about all we have initially.

So how do we replace the disclosure widget with a custom icon? Using an attribute selector, you can detect whether the <details> element is open or closed and apply an appropriate background image. We do something similar in this example, except that instead of using a background image, we use the :after pseudo-element:

summary::-webkit-details-marker {
  display: none
}
summary:after {
  background: red; 
  border-radius: 5px; 
  content: "+"; 
  color: #fff; 
  float: left; 
  font-size: 1.5em; 
  font-weight: bold; 
  margin: -5px 10px 0 0; 
  padding: 0; 
  text-align: center; 
  width: 20px;
}
details[open] summary:after {
  content: "-";
}

The above example uses literal “+” and “-” characters as the disclosure widget. Depending on your styling, you might need to use :before instead of :after, but both pseudo-elements allow using an image.

The details[open] attribute selector creates some interesting possibilities. And because we’re nice doctors, here’s a more polished example as seen in the screenshot below:

It would be interesting (though not necessarily good design) if you could use CSS transitions to animate the <details> opening and closing, but we can’t just yet.

Accessibility

Unfortunately, at the time of writing, <details> is not accessible via the keyboard. Steve Faulkner writes:

Bottom line is, currently no keyboard support and no usable information exposed to assistive technology.

Try it yourself. If you open a <details> element with your mouse, you can then keyboard through the content, but you should also be able to toggle the details open and shut with the keyboard. So it’s not ideal, but I’m sure the Chrome developers will sort this out soon (won’t you guys?).

Fallbacks

Before anyone exclaims that it doesn’t work in IE6, we know. Thanks to some clever people, we can provide elegant fallbacks though. As listed in this very handy collection of cross-browser polyfills, here are two fallbacks, both of which require jQuery:

• <details> fallback via jQuery by Mathias Bynens
• Another <details> alternative, also based on jQuery by Manuel Bieh

Many of you will be using Modernizr for feature detection, but Modernizr currently doesn’t check for details support. As detailed in the above fallback by Mathias, we can use the following JavaScript:

<script>
  if (!('open' in document.createElement('details'))) {
    alert("No details");
  }
</script>

Why this type of interaction?

Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but why is this widget in HTML5? Well, like so many other features of HTML5, creating these widgets is just easier with HTML5. Date pickers, sliders, progress indicators, and now accordions can be implemented easily and without JavaScript. Who knows what’s next? Native tabs would be nice

Summary

In this article, we’ve demonstrated how to use the <details> and <summary> elements. <details> is a new element and uses the <summary> element to create an interactive disclosure widget natively in the browser.

Currently, <details> only works in Chrome, but hopefully this will change sooner rather than later. There is only one specific CSS trick we can use — ::-webkit-details-marker — but we can use plenty of other CSS to style it up. Let us know in the comments if you’ve got any experience or ideas about the <details> element.

The details and summary elements originally appeared on HTML5 Doctor on August 9, 2011.

What the spec says

The abbr element represents an abbreviation or acronym…

Straightforward enough, right?

How to use it

<abbr> is an inline element, so we can use it like this:

<p><abbr title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</abbr> is the best thing since sliced web.</p>

Since it’s an inline element itself, <abbr> can be used inside other inline elements, like <strong> or <a>:

<p>The <a href="http://w3.org"><abbr title="World Wide Web Consortium">W3C</abbr></a> should hire the <abbr>HTML</abbr>5 doctors.</p>

Keep in mind that abbreviations aren’t always a series of uppercase letters. You can also use <abbr> to mark up a shortened word. For example:

<h1><abbr title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</abbr>5 Doctors <abbr title="Incorporated">Inc.</abbr></h1>

The title attribute creates a tooltip for the user when they hover their cursor over the element:

The dotted border/underline is shown by default in Firefox and Opera, but IE8, Safari, and Chrome need a line of CSS:

<style>
abbr {border-bottom: 1px dotted black;}
</style>

The spec gives an example of how to use <abbr title="..."> if the abbreviation is pluralised. If the plural is inside the <abbr> element, then it should also be included in the title attribute. (This presumably applies to possessives as well.)

<p>What am I supposed to do with all these Beatles <abbr title="compact discs">CDs</abbr> now that I've repurchased them on iTunes?</p>
<p>I've packed in my job to become an astronaut on <abbr title="National Aeronautics and Space Administration's">NASA's</abbr> new space rocket!</p>

Acronyms and abbreviations: what’s the difference?

Although very similar, there is a slight difference between an acronym and an abbreviation. An acronym is a set of letters that forms a new word, such as NATO, while an abbreviation, such as BBC, does not, since you say each letter separately.

So why one over the other?

While there are subtle, pedantic differences between acronyms and abbreviations, the real reason HTML 4 defines two separate elements is simple: browser wars! Over a decade ago, Netscape created the <abbr> element while Microsoft created the <acronym> element. The W3C couldn’t (or wouldn’t) favour one over the other, so both have been in use ever since (until HTML5).

There’s always been a lot of confusion over these two elements and their usage. Witness it in this archive letter from 1997.

We also have browser compatibility issues with the <abbr> element. IE6 and IE7 do not support <abbr>, so many web developers have always used <acronym>. I know I certainly did when I worked for a big public-sector organisation — it seemed like every page had a dozen acronyms!

To get <abbr> working in IE6 and IE7, you need to create the element with JavaScript:

<!--[if lte IE 7]>
<script type="text/javascript">document.createElement('abbr');</script>
<![endif]-->

Conclusion

Thanks to confusion about their definitions and inconsistent browser support, <acronym> was dropped from both XHTML2 (now defunct) and HTML5. It’s been merged with <abbr>, which explicitly states “The abbr element represents an abbreviation or acronym”.

Hopefully you will find using <abbr> relatively straightforward. If you’re ever tempted to use an <acronym>, just use <abbr> instead!

The abbr element originally appeared on HTML5 Doctor on November 30, 2010.

<article>
	<h1>Apple</h1>
	<p>The <b>apple</b> is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree...</p>
	...
</article>

<article>
  <header>
    <h1>Apple</h1>
    <p>Published: <time pubdate="pubdate">2009-10-09</time></p>
  </header>
  <p>The <b>apple</b> is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree...</p>
  ...
  <footer>
    <p><small>Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License</small></p>
  </footer>
</article>

<article>
  <header>
    <h1>Apple</h1>
    <p>Published: <time pubdate datetime="2009-10-09">9th October, 2009</time></p>
  </header>
  <p>The <b>apple</b> is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree...</p>
  ...
  
  <section>
    <h2>Comments</h2>
    <article>
      <header>
      <h3>Posted by: Apple Lover</h3>
      <p><time pubdate datetime="2009-10-10T19:10-08:00">~1 hour ago</time></p>
    </header>
    <p>I love apples, my favourite kind are Granny Smiths</p>
    </article>
    
    <article>
      <header>
        <h3>Posted by: Oranges are king</h3>
        <p><time pubdate datetime="2009-10-10T19:15-08:00">~1 hour ago</time></p>
      </header>
      <p>Urgh, apples!? you should write about ORANGES instead!!1!</p>
    </article>
  </section>
</article>

<article>
  <h1>Apple varieties</h1>
  <p>The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree...</p>

  <section>
    <h2>Red Delicious</h2>
    <p>These bright red apples are the most common found in many supermarkets...</p>
  </section>

  <section>
    <h2>Granny Smith</h2>
    <p>These juicy, green apples make a great filling for apple pies...</p>
  </section>
    
</article>

<section>
  <h1>Articles on: Fruit</h1>

  <article>
    <h2>Apple</h2>
    <p>The apple is the pomaceous fruit of the apple tree...</p>
  </article>

  <article>
    <h2>Orange</h2>
    <p>The orange is a hybrid of ancient cultivated origin, possibly between pomelo and tangerine...</p>
  </article>

  <article>
    <h2>Banana</h2>
    <p>Bananas come in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple, and red...</p>
  </article>
    
</section>

<article>
  <h1>My Fruit Spinner</h1>
  <object>
    <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true">
    <embed src="#" width="600" height="395"></embed>
  </object>
</article>

pubdate
pubdate="pubdate"

The article element originally appeared on HTML5 Doctor on May 18, 2010.

What does it say in the spec?

The meter element represents a scalar measurement within a known range, or a fractional value; for example disk usage, the relevance of a query result, or the fraction of a voting population to have selected a particular candidate.

When I first read about the meter tag, I immediately thought it would be useful for profile pages, such as height and weight, and maybe age, marked up in a nice definition list. However, the third line of the spec says

The meter element also does not represent a scalar value of arbitrary range — for example, it would be wrong to use this to report a weight, or height, unless there is a known maximum value

So there goes my idea. The emphasis of the spec definition is “a scalar measurement within a known range”. We’ll go through some sample usage now but I still think it would add useful meaning to a sportsman’s profile page for example.

Attributes

There are six attributes allowed with the meter tag: value, min, max, high, low and optimum. As we’ll mention later, the emphasis is on the author to use these correctly.

Value

This is what will be parsed out – the actual value. If you do not use the value attribute, then the first number inside the tag is the value: <meter> 2 out of 10</meter>. If a real number is not used, then the value is zero.

Min

The minimum allowed value. If there is no min attribute, then it assumes the minimum is zero. If it is not specified then the value is 0.

Max

The maximum allowed value. If the maximum value is less than the minimum value, then the minimum value is used as the max. If it is not specified then the value is 1. However, if it is possible to specify the value of this in the content – such as a percentage sign, as the maximum then will be 100%

Low

This is considered to be the low part of the value range. It must be less than or equal to the value of the high attribute. Also, if the low value is less than the min value, then the low value is the same as the min value.

High

This is considered to be the high part of the value range. If the high value is less than the low boundary, then the high value is the same as the low value. Also, if the high value is greater than the max value, then the high value is the same as the max value.

Optimum

This is considered to be the optimum value and needs to be somewhere between min and max. It can be greater than the high attribute

Let’s have a look at some examples

A voting or rating tool

<p>Your score is:  <meter>2 out of 10</meter></p>

We can give this further meaning by adding min and max attributes

<p>Your score is: <meter min="0" max="10">2 out of 10</meter></p>

<p>Your score is: <meter value="91" min="0" max="100" low="40" high="90" optimum="100">A+</meter></p>

Without the attributes

You do not always need to use an attribute with the meter tag. You could use

<meter>80%</meter>

Because the max value is going to be 100% (unless you always give that extra 10 ). You can also use fractions as the range is within itself, such as

<meter>3/4</meter>

Some real world examples

Christmas Calendar/Countdown

<p>Christmas is in <meter value ="30" min="1" max="366" title="days">30 days!</p>

Notice that the title attribute can be used to specify the unit (so we can use “centimeters” or “lbs”, and so on).

Just Giving

We could also use meter on the fundraising website Justgiving.

This page, for example, would use

<dl>
  <dt>Target</dt>
  <dd><meter min="145" value="145" title="pounds">£145</meter></dd>
  <dt>Amount raised so far</dt>
  <dd><meter min="0" max="1000" low="50" high="125" value="145" optimum="145" title="pounds">£145</meter></dd>
</dl>

Incorrect use

Empty tag

If you used

<meter min="0" max="100" value="75"></meter>

Nothing will display on your page – it is noted in the spec

The recommended way of giving the value is to include it as contents of the element

So you need to put something in the content of the tag and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a number. The spec has a good example of this

<p><meter value="0.5">Moderate activity,</meter> Usenet, 618 subscribers</p>
<p><meter value="0.25">Low activity,</meter> Usenet, 22 subscribers</p>
<p><meter value="0.25">Low activity,</meter> Usenet, 66 subscribers</p>

Which could be used to produce on-screen information as shown

As I noted earlier, it is incorrect to use as a weight or height, unless there is a maximum value. The spec gives this example:

<p>The grapefruit pie had a radius of <meter>12cm</meter>  and a height of <meter>2cm</meter>.</p> <!-- BAD! -->

Instead, one would either not include the meter element, or use the meter element with a defined range to give the dimensions in context compared to other pies:

<p>The grapefruit pie had a radius of 12cm and a height of 2cm.</p>
<dl>
<dt>Radius: <dd> <meter min=0 max=20 value=12>12cm</meter>
<dt>Height: <dd> <meter min=0 max=10 value=2>2cm</meter>
</dl>

Whilst the above is now a correct usage of the meter tag, how do I know the max height or radius of a grapefruit? I would prefer to use a meter tag there but instead I’d probably just use a definition list to display the information.

Browser support

The meter tag works in at least the following browsers Safari 4, Firefox 3.5, Chrome 2, Opera 9.64 naturally. The following javascript is needed for IE 6, 7 and 8 (see Remy’s article about Getting HTML5 to play nicely in older browsers.

 <!--[if IE]>
  <script  src="http://html5shiv.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/html5.js"></script>
  <![endif]-->

As it is an inline element, you don’t need to do anything special with the CSS.

Conclusion

If I were to use

<meter value="1000" min="0"  max="500">100%</meter>

Obviously there are inconsistencies. Now, I am just being silly there but what the user will see on the screen is “100%” when the value is actually 1000. The meter tag puts the emphasis on the author to make sure that they are using this nice, new semantic tag,well, semantically and correctly.

The attributes can appear to be quite confusing but the spec is very detailed for this element. I do think they may have missed a trick by not allowing it to be used to give a stand-alone height or weight but overall I see the meter tag being used a lot in apps and on webpages, perhaps if used with javascript, it could generate live graphs and charts (though we can also use canvas for this).

Finally, I also wonder if meter allows for negative values? For example if the temperature was going to be between -10 and 5 degrees could I use meter to mark that up? I’d love to know your thoughts.

Useful Links

• http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#the-meter-element

Measure up with the meter tag originally appeared on HTML5 Doctor on October 7, 2009.

At first, I thought the <nav> element to be pretty simple. And whilst it still is very easy to use, I found the specification to not be overly helpful; a lot of decisions are left to the developer. Then on Monday Hixie made a change to the definition of <nav> in the draft following a prompt from our very own Dr Bruce.

How to use it

You are probably used to using something like

<div id="nav">
<ul>
<li><a.... etc

Or

<ul id="mainNav">

Well, for the sake of your markup, nothing much will change as you will now have something like this

<nav>
<ul>
<li><a href="index.html">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="/about/">About</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/">Blog</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>

The specification

The HTML 5 specification defines <nav> as:

The nav element represents a section of a page that links to other pages or to parts within the page: a section with navigation links. Not all groups of links on a page need to be in a nav element only sections that consist of major navigation blocks are appropriate for the nav element. In particular, it is common for footers to have a list of links to various key parts of a site, but the footer element is more appropriate in such cases, and no nav element is necessary for those links.

The key phrase there is “major navigation” (previously primary navigation).

Looking at the example they give – “In the following example, the page has several places where links are present, but only one of those places is considered a navigation section.”

<body>
<header>
<h1>Wake up sheeple!</h1>
<p><a href="news.html">News</a> -
<a href="blog.html">Blog</a> -
<a href="forums.html">Forums</a></p>
<p>Last Modified: <time>2009-04-01</time></p>

<nav>
<h1>Navigation</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="articles.html">Index of all articles</a></li>
<li><a href="today.html">Things sheeple need to wake up for today</a></li>
<li><a href="successes.html">Sheeple we have managed to wake</a></li>
</ul>
</nav>

</header>
<article>
<p>...page content would be here...</p>
</article>
<footer>
<p>Copyright © 2006 The Example Company</p>
<p><a href="about.html">About</a> -
<a href="policy.html">Privacy Policy</a> -
<a href="contact.html">Contact Us</a></p>
</footer>
</body>

I have to say that this is no use to me. There are six items of navigation in the header element there. But only three are in the nav tag. There is no explanation as to what differentiates the first three links with the second three links – both go to different pages and all are in internal to that current site.

They also give a second example:

<body>
<h1>The Wiki Center Of Exampland</h1>

<nav>
<ul>
<li><a href="/">Home</a></li>
<li><a href="/events">Current Events</a></li>
...more...
</ul>
</nav>

<article>
<header>
<h1>Demos in Exampland</h1>

<nav>
<ul>
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This is a little more helpful as I find the biggest isse of the <nav> element is deciding which sets of links should be classed as major navigation.

Where to use it?

If you take a peek at the source code for this site, there are three uses (Ed. or four if you’re on a page that includes pagination) of the nav elements – we used it on the main navigation and above the footer (both are exactly the same links by the way). We also decided to use it on the skip links that are included for accessibility.

Looking at the content of the site, it could be argued that the <nav> element could be used on the Recent Articles and Categories listings in the sidebar. Should you do it? Honestly, I think it is hard to say from looking at the spec – but I would say these are not “major navigation” but it would tempting to do, particularly if you’re analytics suggest these areas of navigation are ‘major’ ways in which your users navigate your site.

Other Possible Uses

Below are a few more examples of other areas of the site in which you might consider using the <nav> element. It is also important to note that while XHTML 2 <nl> element, this hasn’t been replicated in HTML 5 because navigation does not have to take list form, as we’ll see.

• Table of Contents
  I would say definitely yes to that – it is primary navigation for that particularly content
• Previous/next buttons (or pagination)
  I would say yes to this because it is important to the overall structure and hierarchy of the blog/site
  
• Search form
  For me, a definite yes, but it is not mentioned in the spec. A search form is hugely important to the navigation of a site, particularly large sites which rely almost solely on their search engine.
  
• Breadcrumbs
  Again, I would say yes to this as well. Although breadcrumbs are not always necessary and can be used when not applicable, on large sites a breadcrumb trail can be an important navigation aid.

The difference of nav from menu

If you aren’t aware there is another element that can confuse the issue in the HTML 5 specification – menu. I’ve noticed that some developers are using the <menu> element for navigation rather than the <nav> element. We thought it best to clarify that <menu> is to be used for a list of commands and is an interactive element and more likely to be used exclusively in Web Applications. We will be covering more about the <menu> element in a later post.

And finally…

Only with the help of the community, and hopefully a much clearer spec, can we be sure when and perhaps more importantly, when not to use the <nav> element.

Semantic navigation with the nav element originally appeared on HTML5 Doctor on July 15, 2009.

Of course, this will only work in a few browsers: Safari 3.1+, Firefox 3.5+, and latest builds of Opera (oh, and potentially the next release of Chrome).

The ‘old’ way

Ugh, look at this horrid code:

<object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="425" height="344" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0">
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" />
<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" />
<param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oHg5SJYRHA0&hl=en&fs=1&" />
<param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" />
<embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oHg5SJYRHA0&hl=en&fs=1&" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true">
</embed>
</object>

Yuck. And as you know, you need Flash for this. Or it is often delivered via javascript as well so it is not perfect.

The HTML 5 way

Nice, clean, minimal code:

<video width="640"  height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/demo/google_main.mp4"  controls autobuffer>
<p> Try this page in Safari  4! Or you can <a  href="http://www.youtube.com/demo/google_main.mp4">download the  video</a> instead.</p>
  </video>

Autoplay

The video tag has an attribute that allows the video to play when the page loads.

<video src="abc.mov" autoplay>
</video>

But autoplay is bad ok? Youtube and the like autoplay their videos. But before you push the launch button for your HTML 5 site, strongly consider whether it should autoplay a video.

Download

If the browser doesn’t know what to do with video tag, or if there is a display error, you can offer a download to the video instead:

Autobuffer

Autobuffer attribute is used when autoplay is not used but the page/site owner thinks the video will be watched at some point. The video is downloaded in the background, so when the user starts the video, it will be able to play at least some of the content. If both autoplay and autobuffer are used, then autobuffer is ignored.

It is worth pointing out at this point that the browser automatically downloads the video anyway, with or without autobuffer and there is nothing you can do about it. This has bandwidth and loading time issues, particularly if you have a lot of video on your page.

Poster

Use the poster attribute to display a frame of the video (as a .jpg, .png, whatever), in case the video doesn’t load for some reason. It can be a local image or elsewhere on the web

<video width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/demo/google_main.mp" autobuffer controls poster="whale.png">
<p>Try this page in Safari 4! Or you can <a href="http://www.youtube.com/demo/google_main.mp4">download the video</a> instead.</p>
</video>

You should use the poster attribute because you don’t want the user to see nothing.

Controls

Adding this attribute means you can use your own play/pause/etc buttons for your video. Safari has lovely default controls but you can create your own.

Subtitles

There is no attribute for subtitles (yet – hello HTML 5 group) but just thought I’d mention it. Personally I love the way the JW FLV player handles it, but this is a very interesting read: http://blog.gingertech.net/2008/12/12/attaching-subtitles-to-html5-video/

But ideally, we will be able to delivery subtitles/description audio without javascript.

Current issues

Codecs

I won’t claim to be a video/audio codec expert but there are a few outstanding issues in this area, which this article does a good job explaining.

Internet Explorer

IE hasn’t a clue and as the market leader, will need to be addressed. Thankfully here at HTML 5 Doctor, we have a few hints and tips for IE that will be coming shortly.

Physical file

So far, the video tag needs to link to a physical file (see example at the top). What we need here is a way to just import, say a YouTube video, using the video tag, like we did with the embed tag.

When I set out writing this article, what I wanted to do was kick it back to 2008 and Rickroll the lot of you but so far I haven’t found a way to do it with the video tag.

Here’s what I think you should be able to do with the video tag:

<video src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oHg5SJYRHA0&hl=en&fs=1&" autoplay>
</video>

How awesome would that be?

Conclusion

I think there is a long way to go yet but this tag has real potential. The issue over codecs looks certain to run and run, but you can put fall backs in the code, like the download link. You could use a combination of the video, object, embed elements, but that markup will be pretty horrendous:

<video width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/demo/google_main.mp4" autobuffer controls poster="whale.png">
<object classid="clsid:02bf25d5-8c17-4b23-bc80-d3488abddc6b" width="640"height="360" codebase="http://www.apple.com/qtactivex/qtplugin.cab">
<param value="http://www.youtube.com/demo/google_main.mp4">
<param value="true">
<param value="false">
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/demo/google_main.mp4" width="640"height="360" autoplay="true" controller="false" pluginspage="http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/">
</embed>
</object>
</video>

In the meantime

If you don’t want to use the video tag yet, then here is valid XHTML code to display a video:

<object width="460" height="265" data="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5072163" type="application/x-shockwave-flash">
<param value="http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=5072163"></param>
<param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
<param value="always"></param>
</object>

Further reading

• Editor’s Draft 17 June 2009
• Accessibility of HTML 5 video and audio elements
• Setting up a HTML 5 on-line video site
• Watch Video…without Flash
• YouTube HTML 5 demo
• Using the HTML 5 video tag with a Flash fallback
• Lessons From Building a Basic Video Player in HTML 5

The video element originally appeared on HTML5 Doctor on June 18, 2009.