DAT202: Research into the HTML5 platform for our educational application

As part of our assignment for the Creative Industries module, we were given a task to produce an educational application for a charity that promotes expeditions. Our client, ETE (Education Through Expeditions), are about to go on an expedition to mark the Queen's Diamond Jubilee by going to the highest point of the British Commonwealth in the Arctic Circle (source: http://www.etelive.org/content/contentete.numo?id=172). We decided to base our application on this expedition, as it provides an insight into the facts about the expedition, the area and wildlife, to the application's intended target audience: school children.

Because there's no restriction as to what platform we could use to base our application on, I came up with the idea of putting the new HTML5 platform into good use, not only because we already have another module that is teaching us about the platform (specifically <canvas>, the main component of which has been highlighted as a replacement for Flash), but also because we saw it as a perfect opportunity to break away from the confines of using proprietary media, and reinforce our learning of the platform at the same time.

To break down the research I've done on HTML5, here's a SWOT analysis:

Strengths:

• HTML5 is a new platform that introduces new features never seen before in the history of the HTML standard
• HTML5 is platform-independent; it works in browsers that support it, and in fact, a vast majority of browsers in use today already support it
• <canvas> is especially important, because, for rich, dynamic media content, it reduces the need for Flash as many capabilities, such as animation, can be used inside the tag

Weaknesses:

• Not all browsers support the features in HTML5, especially some of the proposed features
• <audio> and <video> does have compatibility issues, due to different browser developers favouring incompatible standards over established standards, although the issues are being eliminated within time as developers are still deciding on a final, agreeable standard
• One aspect that was highlighted was that some schools may have neglected to upgrade their browsers, although with support for IE6 being discontinued and some schools even moving away from Windows, the uptake of HTML5-compatible browsers are increasing

Opportunities:

• HTML5 will eventually replace Flash and other plugins for many purposes that HTML5 replicates, such as rich media
• HTML5 has a lot of potential to mature into a platform that will eventually eliminate issues in a completely open-source environment

Threats:

• Complacency in the industry and schools means that uptake of HTML5 is still slow, and with the aforementioned issues regarding compatibility in <audio> and <video> due to differing standards, Flash still remains dominant
• Until schools start upgrading their systems, market share for HTML5 will still be in a niche

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