London Web and HTML5

I took a trip to London on Thursday the 20th January to my first London Web meetup to listen to Bruce Lawson talk about HTML5. It’s the first time I managed to attend one of Bruce’s talks, and I wasn’t disappointed.

(Dave Gardner was also attending, speaking about Cassandra, the NoSQL database used by Facebook but unfortunately I had to leave before his talk began).

Speaking about “The Zen of HTML5”, only Bruce could successfully intertwine Buddhist temples in Thailand with the move from HTML 4.01 to HTML5.

Bruce gave a history of HTML5 and where it came from, talking about HTML 4.01, the attempted move to XHTML, Web Forms 2.0 and finally HTML5. He also spoke about some of the new semantic elements of HTML5, with examples of the video element and how to style it and then wowing the crowd with some of the new input types that are up and coming (currently only Opera supports them, but they’re on their way in Firefox 4).

Personally most of this I already knew, having been interested in HTML5 since the end of 2009. It did however amaze me how many people there seemed to be unaware of many of the new features of HTML5.

Bearing in mind that most of the people there were either web designers or developers, some of the talk I overheard and the reactions of the audience of the to the input elements in Opera surprised me. HTML5 has been around for a while now, and there has been lots written about it and many sites out there using it. This gave me the impression that most professionals in the web industry would be aware of it and would have least looked into it.

Of course my interpretation could be wrong, and I may be mistaken, but it was slightly disappointing personally that more people aren’t aware and out there using it. That said, it is also a very good thing that people like Bruce are out there giving talks like this to make people aware and that these people are interested in learning and are attending such events.

I thoroughly enjoyed the talk and would be interested in attending more should I get the chance.

Update

Bruce’s talk is now available on video for your viewing pleasure.