This has come as a surprise to many people as it’s the first version of the HTML language to have a logo.  This is no ordinary version of HTML though and the reasoning behind the new marketing campaign is both sensible and practical.

In a press-release the World Wide Web Consortium said…

“It stands strong and true, resilient and universal as the markup you write. It shines as bright and as bold as the forward-thinking, dedicated web developers you are. It’s the standard’s standard, a pennant for progress. And it certainly doesn’t use tables for layout.”

We’re moving into an area of computing when we’re breaking free of the legacy shackles of old.  HTML 5 is an important step forward with this but many web-based companies and even individuals with their smaller websites might be hesitant to embrace the new standard.

People and companies naturally want the maximum number of people to be able to visit their website and today that’s easy.  I can remember only ten years ago though people shying away from the use of Flash because there simply weren’t enough people with the Flash player software installed on their computers.

These days the Flash player is everywhere but HTML5 browsers aren’t.  There will be huge numbers of websites and companies watching the uptake of compatible browsers with a keen eye, and this will be one of the biggest ongoing stories for the next few years.

So it’s reasonable and rational that the W3C should launch a logo and try to kick-start a marketing campaign to get HTML5 adopted early.  We can only hope that they succeed.  Here’s to the HTML5 version of gHacks.net!

Recently though the company has taken a more pragmatic approach and has moved, slowly admittedly, towards full standards compliance.  With their next browser, Internet Explorer 9, they’ve said it will be fully compliant and recent tests from the W3C organisation certainly bear this out.

The figures, reported today by Engadget, put IE9 slightly ahead of the next best browsers for full compliance with the new web standard.  Admittedly the top three browsers are all betas and so we can expect these figures to move, sharply and quickly, but for now it’s an excellent sign.

Internet Explorer has lost significant market share in recent years after the cataclysmic calamity that was IE6 (I try and find stronger and more colourful adjectives every time I mention the god-awful thing).  Now Microsoft are desperate to grab some market share back and, by all accounts, IE9 could do it through a combination of complete standards compliance and new features that people actually want and will use.

We’ll keep you informed about how this picture changes at gHacks.  The new HTML5 browsers are all due out in 2011 and it will be a very interesting year indeed for the web that we’ve all come to know and love.

Sticking to standards can therefore lead to issues with certain web browsers, which lack support for the latest tags or render pages wrong.

The W3C therefore has its own web browser and editor which adheres to standards more than many browsers and supports certain new technologies others don’t, such as RDF annotation. This browser is Amaya, an open-source and cross-platform browser.

Amaya can handle a wide-range of open file formats, including HTML, CSS, XHTML, SVG and MathML.

The software integrates the browser and web editor: when you go to a web page, it can be edited inside the browser. It also instantly displays syntactic errors.

It also integrates the mark-up languages. For example, in a web page, one can write formula utilising MathML or add SVG shapes inside the software.

Amaya is a reasonable WYSIWYG editor and a good web browser for developmental purposes. It is also good to produce rich web-pages, which include other pieces of mark-up than HTML.

Update: Amaya has not been updated in the last two years. While it is still possible to use the cross-platform HTML editor it needs to be noted that it does not support recent technology advancements. This includes no support for HTML5 or CSS3 in the last release.

Windows and Linux users find in Blue Griffon a suitable alternative. Blue Griffon user however need to know HTML to work with the program, as it does not display information about elements that can be selected in the editor. Users who know their HTML elements will find it to be a suitable alternative for Amaya.

Displaying valid markup code in websites, forums, blogs and any other page is not difficulty. The only thing that needs to be done to achieve this is to convert all entities before pasting the code. This can be done manually or by using a script like that offered at Spacefem.

All that needs to be done is to paste the code into the form and click on the Make Code button at the bottom. To display the following code on a website

<a href="http://www.ghacks.net/">Ghacks</a>

one would have to paste the following code into the form on the website where the code should be displayed

<a href="http://www.ghacks.net/">Ghacks</a>

This is actually the easiest way to ensure that the website will not interpret the code and that the code will be valid markup code.