Over the last few weeks, we’ve been working on something a little special here at the HTML5 Doctor.

You’re obviously here because you’re interested in HTML5. You might even be here because the thought of reading the HTML5 spec on the W3C site gives you nightmares. Well, fear not, for you shall be able to sleep easy once again! We’ve just launched the HTML5 glossary.

The purpose of the glossary is simple: we’re going to give you a breakdown of all the elements within the spec in clear, bite-sized chunks.

From the screenshot above, you can see that we’ve laid out the page to be as clear as possible (using HTML5, of course). At the top of the page is an alphabetised list of links to individual sections of the glossary. The rest of the page is the list of elements and their descriptions.

I’ve labeled the key points of each entry in the above screenshot:

1. Links labeled “Our Prognosis” refer to an article that one of the Doctors has previously published.
2. Each entry contains a brief description of what the element represents and its proper (and possibly improper) uses.
3. We always include a link to the element’s full description in the official HTML5 spec.
4. Code snippets show contextual examples of the element in an HTML document (shown in the screenshot below).

Not every element has a code snippet and “prognosis” link, but we’ll be doing out best to flesh out the glossary with some more examples and elements in the coming weeks.

Be sure to add the glossary to your list of HTML5 resources!

Got a suggestion to help us improve the glossary? Request a missing element or report a problem by leaving a comment below, or head over to the contact page and send us an email.

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HTML5 Doctor Glossary originally appeared on HTML5 Doctor on November 19, 2009.