Recently, main was formally added to the W3C HTML specification. Now that the dust has settled, it’s about time we dive in to find out where and when it’s appropriate to use main. Let’s get started.

If you don’t already know, the hgroup element is obsolete in HTML5. Advice is now provided in the HTML spec on how to mark up subheadings, subtitles, alternative titles and taglines using existing and implemented HTML features.

In the first article in this series we looked at the history of HTML5 forms and many of the new attributes available to us. In this second and final part of the series, we’ll look at the new input types available in HTML5. As we’ll see, these new features will go a long way toward making your life easier while delivering a delightful user experience. The best thing about all this? You can start using them now.

No doubt you interact with at least one form on the Web every day. Whether you’re searching for content or logging in to your e-mail account or Facebook page, using online forms is one of the most common tasks performed on the Web. As designers and developers, creating forms has a certain monotony about it, particularly writing validation scripts for them. HTML5 introduces a number of new attributes, input types, and other elements for your markup toolkit. In this article we’ll be focussing on the new attributes with a future article looking at the new input types.

When building web sites and web applications, we often need to provide essential feedback to a user informing them of the progress of their request or task, be it uploading a file, playing a video, or importing data. HTML5 makes life easier for us by defining an element whose sole purpose is just that: the […]

After The Great Vendor Prefix Hullaballoo of April 2012 comes The Great Responsive Images Brouhaha of May 2012. We look at the main competing formats for adding adaptive images to HTML – the <picture> element, and the <img srcset=""> attribute.

Guest doctor Mark Boas returns with a follow up to his 2009 article Native Audio in the Browser, which covers the basics of HTML5 audio. Read the original if you want to get a feel for the <audio> element and associated API. If not, get comfortable and dive deep to learn about the current state of play for HTML5 audio.

It’s time we had “the talk”. I could get you a book or recommend some sites from Dr Mike’s special bookmarks folder, but the best way to make sure you get the right idea is to do it myself. I’m talking about HTML semantics. Understanding the thinking behind the naming of elements will help your markup shine.

The <ol> element has a new attribute reversed in HTML5. In addition, a couple of related attributes purged in HTML 4 have made a return, namely start and type for <ol>, and value for <li>. Making things more interesting, the returning attributes were removed from HTML 4 for being presentational. So why are they back? Let’s investigate…

HTML5 (or now, the WebRTC spec) gives us getUserMedia, a way for JavaScript to access streams from a device’s camera and microphone. Find out how to use it and normalise the syntax differences between Opera and Chrome with the gUMshield.