[TYPO3-content-rendering] BLE, core and HTML5

[Thomas "Thasmo" Deinhamer]

Patrick Broens schrieb:
> This would solve the whole problem. We can have proper HTML5 output. Yeah!!!

Actually not. This all is quite a bit complex.
I just wanna give my 2 cents about this.

HTML5 is a set of features. It contains many
things, one thing is new HTMl5 elements. There
are also other things like new JavaScript APIs
for certain features, like Video/Audio.

CSS3 for example does _not_ belong to HTML5,
but it makes sense to use it in combination
with some HTML5 elements/features.

There is a general problem using HTML5 elements
like header, hgroup, section, article, aside,
details, nav, menu, etc. - old browsers don't
know them.

What does "they don't know them" mean? It means
some of those elements are block-level elements
and browsers will display them as inline elements.

Fix? Easy: Just define "default" CSS for those elements.

Another more complicated thing is - I think - IE6 up
to IE7 or even IE8. They also don't know those new
elements and additionally it's even NOT possible
to style them with CSS at all.

Fix? More or less easy: HTML5 shim/shiv.

It's a small JS script which will "register" those
new HTML5 elements to the browser. And suddenly it's
possible to style those elements with CSS in IE6/7(/8).

Modernizr for example has the HTML5 shim baked in
and will "register" the new HTML5 items to the browser.

Modernizr in general provides "tests" which will either
return "true" or "false". So you can check if the browser
supports a certain feature, may it be HTML5 or CSS(3).

A third problem are features like local storage, the
new history API or HTML5 video/audio, because those
can't be "hacked in" with JavaScript.

Fix? More or less easy: Fallback Technologies.

Those technologies are either based on flash (for
video and audio) or JavaScript (for local storage,
history API etc.). So I think there are still some
HTML5 features which can not be "simulated" in
older browsers, neither with Flash nor JS.

Another problem in general is CSS3, because I think
there are several new features which just can't be
fixed by JavaScript and the _most_ important thing
is, fixing CSS with JS is not very "nice".

So in general we can have "some" HTML5 features in
old browsers, we can use fallbacks for features which
can't be "fixed" and some features are just not possible.

After all I would consider having IE8 and Firefox 3.6
etc. in mind when developing TYPO3 4.7 for the frontend,
but maybe with little effort for IE7 and below because
it either is not so much difference - EE7 is the new IE6 -
or browser usage is by far too low to fix things.

So getting TYPO3 ready for HTML5 needs considerations
on many fronts:

* HTML5 source output (with HTML5 shim for older browsers)
* New features: Audio/Video/Canvas/etc.
* Fallback for features: Audio/Video/etc.

I consider developers to implement their own fallbacks for
features like local storage or the history API, but TYPO3
at least needs the HTML5 shim/CSS normalization for HTML5
and new features like native HTML5 audio and video, maybe
also some things like canvas etc.

If you got questions, let them come! :D

Regards,
Thomas