The humble anchor tag. It’s the lynchpin of the web, allowing links between pages. Surely there’s nothing to improve here?
Well, one problem I encountered today is how to put a link to a resource (mp3, pdf or similar) and make sure that when the link is clicked it isn’t rendered in the browser but instead is downloaded. It turns out that HTML5 allows us to do just that, by adding the download attribute to the link. If the attribute is set to a value, that will be the filename of the download.
To force a download:
[html]Download your file[/html]
To set a filename: I skipped a couple of days, so by way of catch up, three elements today. Italic text is really semantically complicated. Who knew? Presenting the <i>, <em> and <cite> elements… I haven’t completed my archaeological dig, but as far back as 1995, HTML 2.0 had already standardised both <i>and <em>, with <i> used for italic, and <em> for an “emphasized phrase, typically rendered as italics”. My recollection however is that most at the time used <i>. With HTML4.0, CSS and the separation of style and content, <i> was deprecated and <em> popularised for emphasis, typically rendered as italics, but open Read More As a techie, I often want to post excerpts of code on a webpage. Generally in publishing code fragments are printed in a monotype font to distinguish from the main body of text and also to more closely resemble how the code appears in the IDE. The <code> element is used in this way to highlight content that is a code fragment. Here’s a quick example both as the text and then in use: Use the JQuery <code> click() </code> function to bind an event handler to the javascript click event to perform an action when the user mouse clicks Read More <small> is in the ‘4.6 Text-level semantics’ section of the WHAT-WG HTML living standard. <small> one used to mean just that: small font. It is now one of a set of elements that has been re-imagined in a more semantic light. <small> now has a very distinct meaning – it now represents ‘side comments such as small print’. This also would cover disclaimers, copyright notices and the like. <small> is a text level element, so is expected to be used within a block of text such as a paragraph, and not as a block of text. So small print such Read More When I first learnt HTML4 and CSS I did it by digesting the formal spec, section by section. Seemed like the best way to learn it, straight from the horses mouth. I’m pretty conversant with the current set of HTML5 elements, but mainly from second hand reading of books / blog posts; also the spec is still in flux, so I thought a similar exercise would be useful again. Rather than try and tackle it in one go and get indigestion, I thought ‘how about reading up on a tag a day’. So here we are: I’ve created a new Read More A: When it’s HTML. Confused? After the announcements of the last few days you have every right to be. I mentioned in my ‘about‘ page that I intended to write a series of posts looking at HTML5. To set the scene I had intended to start with a brief history of browsers and HTML implementations, working forward with detours into XHTML along the way before arriving at HTML5. Given the HTML5 publicity relating to the new logo, I think it’ll work better if I leap, Tarantino style, into the middle of the story, before a few flashbacks explaining the events Read More
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HTML5 – the ‘italic’ elements – em, i and cite
HTML5 – The code element
HTML5 – The small element
HTML5 elements
Q: When is HTML5 not HTML5?