HTML5 and mobile browsers

Writ­ing my pre­vi­ous post on the but­ton ele­ment and mobile browsers got me think­ing about HTML5 and how it will work with mobile web browsers.

I know all the major browser vendors (Microsoft, Moz­illa, Opera and Apple) are onboard with HTML5, and they are also the major mobile browsers vendors (well Opera, Microsoft and Apple via its’ web­kit being used by Nokia are), but will HTML5 be they imple­men­ted for mobile web browsers and how?

Because cur­rently mobile browsers use a sub­set of XHTML, XHTML-MP (400k PDF) and it does not include all reg­u­lar XHTML ele­ments, the but­ton ele­ment for example. How will the OMA and its’ mem­bers deal with HTML5. Will they:

1. Con­tinue using the per­fectly ser­vice­able XHTML-MP and wait and see what hap­pens with the accept­ance of HTML5 in the wider community?
2. Cre­ate a sub­set of HTML5 like XHTML-MP, which will provide the major­ity of fea­tures of HTML5 while try­ing to keep the browser foot­print as small as possible?
3. Accept HTML5 and cre­ate browsers with all the func­tion­al­ity of a desktop browser and a sim­ilar size footprint?

So until I know how mobile browsers will deal with HTML5, I will avoid using it. In fact I am look­ing at how I use XHTML and CSS to make sure what I code now and in the future com­plies with OMA sub­sets of XHTML-MP (400k PDF) and Wire­less CSS (400k pdf)

If you don’t know why I am con­cerned about mobile browsers, read my present­a­tion the mobile web why you should care. One reason being some people pre­dict by 2010 more people will be access­ing the inter­net by mobile phone than computer.

tagged HTML5 OMA mobile browser XHTML-MP Wire­less CSS

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 6:06 pm and is filed under css and html, mobile web . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.