It’s our birthday and we’ll cry if we want to, or so the song goes. Today marks HTML5 Doctors first birthday so we thought we’d let you in on the celebrations. This brief post takes us through a little recap of what we’ve done, looks at what’s to come and we’ve even got a little birthday treat for you all – the HTML5 equivalent of bringing doughnuts to work.

What we’ve done

The site was launched publicly a year ago today and what a year it’s been. We could never have expected the level of interest we’ve had nor that the site would be so well received. We’d like to thank you all for reading, commenting and linking to our articles. We intended the site to have a community feel and feel we’re continuing to work towards that.

Having met through twitter and then in person at FOWD 2009 the idea was formed over a few beers. The name derives from a certain Mr Zeldman’s “Ask Dr Web” (“A complete guide to web design”). You can find a little more on our history over on the about page.

We started with five doctors (Jack, Tom, Mike, Bruce & Rich), which became six just before launch when Remy came on board. We’ve since grown to seven with the indomitable Mr Studholme joining our ranks several months ago. Extra credit should also go to Brandan Lennox who knuckles away in the background studiously editing our copy. Between us we’ve managed to crank out more than a post a week, which we hope will increase in the coming year.

We’ve also had several guest authors who have covered some great topics such as audio in the browser, why designers should care about HTML5 and data attributes so thanks to Mark, Cennydd & Chris.

Last November we launched the glossary which offers an introductory view to HTML5 elements with code examples and links to our more in depth articles. It’s been a well used resource and we’re adding to it all the time, slowly building it up to be a complete resource.

In terms of events at least one of our team has spoken at a number of events in the past year, not least Bruce (with Martin Kliehm) being voted the 4th best talk at SXSWi. Also, earlier this month we ran a HTML5 clinic at Web Directions @Media in London. I think we managed to help quite a few people out down there. Remember to get in touch if you’re looking for someone to talk HTML5 at your event or you feel you need an emergency clinic setting up.

Future Plans

That’s enough looking back, now let’s start looking forward. We’ve got some cracking posts and super developments in the works for the coming months. I can’t say much more than that right now but I can tell you we’ll have articles on web forms, canvas, microdata and taking your applications offline in the not too distant future.

What we’d really love to do is to start writing articles that you, our readers want. So here’s your chance, if you’ve got a topic you’d like us to cover or an idea for the site then please leave a comment below. We’ll take a look through them and get writing.

A small gift

Everyone likes to receive a present on their birthday right? Well for our birthday we decided to give you a present, in the form of a handy flowchart to help you choose the most semantically appropriate HTML5 element. Those lucky folk who attended @media already received have a hard copy but here’s the electronic version you asked for.

Inspired by an original version sent in by Piotr (one of our readers) and developed by Oli the chart helps guide you through those tricky differences between header, footer, aside, section, article, figure and yes, div. It’s available in either pdf or png format.

We hope you find it useful and we’d love to hear any feedback you might have.

All that’s left for us to say is thanks for a great first year and here’s to the next one!