Here’s the conclusion that all the web gurus seem to have drawn over the past months: HTML5 is the future, and that future is slowly creeping into our midst. This article by Dave Shea is the latest proof of that. Then there are inspiration galleries and blogs dedicated to the use of HTML5 for markup, plus hardly any mention of XHTML2 anywhere else.
rel and more meaningful links
But I’m not going to get into the war between the two here; I’ll just focus on a specific development in the arena: link relations. There’s more to it than rel=stylesheet and rel=alternate. About a dozen more.
For example, the Google-imposed rel=nofollow will be officially added in HTML5, but the seemingly convenient rel=feed may be dropped due to browser implementation. Other interesting link relations mentioned are rel=search, which obviously points to a search page, and rel=sidebar, which refers to a document “shown in a secondary browsing context (if possible), instead of in the current browsing context.” More are being proposed here, including rel=accessiblity.
rel seems to be what plugins are to web browsers, so it’s interesting to see how they can make a markup language as extensible as possible.
rev and a less rotten web
Still related to link relations is the rev attribute, which stands for a “reverse link”. It hasn’t been as popular as its cousin rel up until microblogging boomed, and consequently, URL shorteners and the threat of link rot.
Considering just how popular Twitter is these days, particularly as a social media marketing and SEO tool where links are the mode of currency, using rev=canonical to indicate one URL is a shortened version of the other:
Google introduced rel="canonical" recently. It’s a way of pointing from an alternate URL back to the canonical URL of the current document: the relationship of the linked document to the current document is “canonical”.
If you’re linking from the canonical URL to an alternate URL (like, say, a shortened URL), you could use rev=”canonical”: the relationship of the current document to the linked document is “canonical”.
People are also advised to check long URLs at this RevCanonical app to determine whether they already contain shortened ones.
So we know there’s a backlash of the list article format going on. And we know that the general cure to the “disease” is to go for quality, not quanity. Discussions instead of a bombardment of links and screen grabs. Though of course, that’s debatable since if I’m a designer looking for these resources in the first place, I’d find them indispensable anyway.
The thing is though, if I am looking for that perfectly tiled background pattern or that brilliant CSS3 button tutorial, how do I scour through oodles of these lists to find exactly what I need? How would I know from my list of bookmarks or starred Google Reader items that the blog post titled “50+ Fresh CSS Techniques, Tutorials and Resources” is the one I need, and not “5 Useful Coding Solutions For Designers And Developers”? These titles are super vague and because the posts are super long, it’s now finding a needle in a haystack.
List article authors need to raise the stakes and add more useful features. A table of contents, for example, that summarizes all the items in the list. Tags too, that should describe the article with keywords as specific as possible.
Perhaps someone can even create an aggregator of these lists, with proper categorization and search. It could even be—gasp—the next “CSS gallery”.
Why fan the flames and tolerate list articles? Again, I know what they’re useful for. They’re a convenient way to check up on what’s new in the design blogosphere, and you can never have too many resources. They’re certainly taking up space for thought-provoking discussions, but the demand is high and we need them too. We might as well rally to improve the format instead of banish it.
The same goes for CSS galleries and image bookmarking sites. I welcome the large amount of sites because sometimes you can never have enough. But how I browse through and experience their content can definitely be improved.
I’m not just talking about aesthetics or readability here. I’m talking about what can be considered new forms of content with sub-content that can describe and classify them:
- the list article as a type of resource list that contains different downloadable files (e.g., brushes, vectors, photos), tutorials, screenshots, etc.
- the CSS gallery as a type of website list that contains different websites classified according to style, site type, color, CMS, topic, number of pages, designer, etc.
- the image bookmarking site as a type of image list that contains different images classified according to style, image type, color, resolution, designer, etc.
Is it possible to create new content formats for these? People have managed to do so many things with Twitter tweets, and Microformats are moving forward at a steady pace, so why not see if we can remix and mashup larger types of content, like ones contained in blog posts?
One of the biggest problems on the Web is that we’re marking things up on such a low level, while tapping into XML structures isn’t as easy to do yet. But imagine if we can make all these resources so much more organized and findable. Maybe people wouldn’t need to complain about list articles and CSS galleries as cliches then.
Contrary to popular belief, Microsoft is committed to building a better web with with a redesigned MIX Online and its horde of interesting resources, from articles to web development tools to delightful goodies.
We’ve all been guilty of bashing Microsoft for several different reasons, but now is a great time to give it a second (or a hundredth) chance. After all, it’s Christmas!
Articles and Opinions
Let’s start with readable sources on MIX Online, the Articles and Opinions sections. Skim through them and you’ll get a good sense that MIX Online shaping up to be a reputable web design source that’s passionate about web standards, user experience, and best practices. Read Nishant Kothary’s walkthrough of the site redesign, transforming moleskine sketches to a cool community running on their new CMS platform (more on that later).
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