Introducing HTML5

Chapter 1 Main Structure

Bruce Lawson

ALTHOUGH MUCH OF HTML5 is for making interactive applications, there is a great deal of interest to markup monkeys as well as JavaScript junkies; 28 new elements exist with new semantics that can be used in traditional “static” pages, as well as a swathe of new form controls that can abolish JavaScript form validation altogether.

Let’s get straight into the code and begin marking up a typical page with HTML5. We’ll transform the current markup structure of <div>s into a more semantic system using new HTML5 structural elements like <nav>, <header>, <footer>, <aside>, and <article>. We’ll look at how these work, and how HTML5 documents have an unambiguous outline and are—arguably—more “semantic.”

But first ...