Saturday, 21 January 2012

What You Need to Know About HTML 5

HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, and it is the most common language used to create web pages. The basic HTML structure is composed of tags, but you can also embed images, videos, and load scripts from other languages (e.g., Javascript) inside pages.

You probably already knew that. What you might not know is that currently we are using the fourth revision of HTML, called HTML 4.01, and that the next revision, called HTML 5.0, will completely change the web development segment.

Here are some major game changers that we’ll see with HTML 5:

The elements will be more aligned with modern web design practices. Some of the new tags include <header>,<nav>,<aside> and <footer>.
The DOCTYPE was simplified to <!DOCTYPE html>.
You will be able to embed audio and video directly in the HTML code and without the need for external plugins. The two new elements for that are <audio> and <video>.
New APIs (application programming interfaces) will be included. This will enable developers to add drag-n-drop features, document editing, drawing and so on.

Cool stuff right? Unfortunately we can’t say for sure when HTML 5 will be adopted. The first public working draft with the HTML 5 specifications was published January of 2008. The last one was published in August of this year, and you can read it on the W3.org website.

Major browsers are gradually incorporating HTML 5 specs, but it might be a while before they are fully compatible and before developers start using the language. If you want to test it, both Firefox 3.1 and Safari 3.1 should have support for some features. You can go to youtube.com/html5 to see a demo page built with HTML 5.

Reduce Your Bounce Rate In One Second

So, how do you get visitors to spend more time on your site and reduce your bounce rate, without spending more than one second trying to do it?

It’s simple.

First of all get inside the control panel of your website (e.g., WordPress admin dashboard, or the equivalent on the software you are using). Now go to the section where you can tweak your CSS and other design aspects (in WordPress this is under the “Appearance” menu). Now find the line controlling the font size on your site, and increase it. That is it!

There are many case studies around the web where people used A/B testing to find how they could reduce the bounce rate, and increasing the font size works on most situations.

Just consider that the population in most developed countries is getting older and older, and that more and more people need to stare at a computer screen all day long for professional reasons (meaning our eyes are getting tired).

Then combine that with larger screen resolutions (where you have more pixels on the screen, but the actual appearance of the graphics gets smaller) and you get web visitors who would love to find a big large font on your site, so that they can read your awesome content comfortably.

And yes, I did increase the font on Daily Blog Tips a couple of months ago. It used to be 12, now it’s 13, and the bounce rate improved slightly