DAT204: Application complete!

After 3 nights dedicating the whole weekend to the assignment, I have finally completed my semantic application. Since the proposal back in November, the project has come a long way, and with a design change occurring half-way, the result looks very promising, and does hold a lot of potential as to how this application can change the world.

The Introduction page is dominated with a profile picture and a brief introduction underneath it; the rest of the introduction is done in the Personal Profile. The content is marked up using XML in a polyglot environment (except for the addresses in the Contact page, where there is already a HTML5 semantic tag associated with it), and the content have CSS3 background transition effects to provide emphasis, which helps employers to easily read the content, especially in environments where processing of applications in a swift and timely fashion are required. The content box is styled natively using CSS3, as is the text in the AJAX tabs, and in terms of AJAX, it is used (with JQuery magic) to display the content in the same page from separate HTML files without having to go to another page.

Adding to the easy-to-use nature of the application, the content pages are formatted in a way that even the less-experienced users can easily populate the pages, provided that they have at least a plain-text editor and some knowledge of HTML (the custom XML tags are already provided for the user), because the main CSS file already provides the styling for the content, so whenever it appears unformatted in a WYSIWYG editor, the content becomes styled once it is loaded up in the application.

Overall, I've managed to produce an application that has a lot of potential, and even though I've already seen many examples of online portfolio websites, this semantic application has a lot of potential to impress employers in the professional world...

To view the application, click here: http://www.elnormo91.co.uk/semanticapp/semanticapp.html

DAT204: Laying down the foundations and tightening up the ratchet...

So far, the foundations of the semantic application has been laid, and what was originally the empty shell of an app that has yet to see the light of the day has now started to progress. In terms of the app, I have chosen to include XML in harmony with HTML5. Despite it sounding like a rather uncanny marriage, the ability of using custom tags in HTML5 is still there, and even though XHTML was going to be the future, the clear direction was that HTML5 eventually emerged to become the winner.

However, the idea of 'XHTML5' still hasn't been put to the metaphorical bed yet, and as this application shows, the idea of XML semantics with the many features of the HTML5 platform can still be a good one.

As the Christmas holidays are starting to just come around the corner, the work still doesn't stop; the next part is to get the graphics sorted out and figure out a way of getting the content in whilst adding in the wonderful HTML5 features.

DAT204: breaking the Web Core Fonts mould with HTML5

Today, I delivered a demonstration of the advanced typography features in the HTML5 platform. Before the advent of the HTML5 platform, web designers are limited to a selection of fonts which are available on the client's computer, or using images for header banners and text content, which can be very labourious for both the browser and the internet connection to handle.

Even though with the advent of faster broadband internet connectivity, it is a lot faster to load them as actual text rather than images, but even with that, there is little that can be done when your range of typefaces are severely limited as not every computer would have them installed, and Web Core Fonts were designed to provide a standard range of fonts for all platforms that are installed by default. With HTML5, it broadens the range of fonts you can use on a web page, and most of all, they are accessible via the server side, so the only requirement would be for the browser to support the font-face rule of CSS3 (as well as obviously, HTML5) and for the font to be placed in the web page's root directory, saving the need to install a font on the client's computer, and for the use of the rather limited Web Core Fonts.

Although font-face has existed since CSS2, it hasn't really been promoted as a feature until CSS3, when it addressed the initial problems regarding the need to use a proprietary format rather than the more widespread .ttf and .otf formats.

In addition, there are much more possibilities that are contained within the whole platform, and this includes varying the CSS from a HTML5 form and using semantics to define the attributes and properties, as well as many other graphical features to name, but a few.

The example I used for the demonstration is Apple's HTML5 showcase: http://www.apple.com/html5/showcase/typography/ (requires Safari, as it uses Apple's interpretation of HTML5, although the whole platform is a draft at the moment. It may change as soon as Gecko and other browsers increase support). Another good example of HTML5 typography is at: http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/canvas/texteffects/, which also, conveniently, explains the graphical capabilities of typography in <canvas>, which will be touched upon in Term 2.