Live Q&A: Guilherme Müller on HTML, 5th August at 4PM (EST)

We’ve had a few questions come in over the night. Let’s get started. :smile:

Hi Guilherme. I was wondering if you had any thought about PPK’s call for a moratorium on new browser features. I’ve read some interesting and considered responses from browser vendors, like this one from Bruce Lawson at Opera. Where do you stand on that debate?

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Hey @Kaberle!
So glad you took the courses and this is a great question. @guilherme What do you think about this:

with all the new fandangled things out there to build websites, how much longer do you think HTML will be used for just that. With Word Press, Grid, etc being so popular, I wondered what your thoughts are. I had a client look at me in disbelief when I told her I had just built a website in HTML5 for her business neighbor.
Made me feel like a real dinosaur.
What are your thoughts on this and perhaps a good comeback for folks like that? hehee

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How do I access this live Q & A? Where’s the video login??

Hi Vegi! The Q&A session is happening here, you’ll see replies start coming through from Guilherme in a minute (he’s typing furiously as we speak :slight_smile: )

I think it’s a just a Q&A on the forum

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With all the new fandangled things out there to build websites, how much longer do you think HTML will be used for just that. With Word Press, Grid, etc being so popular, I wondered what your thoughts are. I had a client look at me in disbelief when I told her I had just built a website in HTML5 for her business neighbor.
Made me feel like a real dinosaur.

@Kaberle I like to think that these tools are for specific purposes. The web is still HTML, CSS and JavaScript. As much as CMSes and frameworks help, here’s a lot of benefit in using the base languages. I still find myself in every new project seeing what I can do better here and there to make the code leaner and faster. I don’t think that using huge CMSes and frameworks is the solution here. So I’d say that there’s a lot of room for the developer that is really worried about the quality and quantity of code.

When people doubt that what I’m offering is better than a WordPress website, for example, I say that my “handcrafted” solution is leaner, faster and easier to update. I have complete control over my websites and can change everything that is needed much faster. For clients that really want a WordPress solution, I can refer to other people.

Hope that answers your question!

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Hi @vegi,
Todays Q&A isn’t a video but a chat. Would you like to post a question? You’re in the right spot. :smile:

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Do you have a preference for when you do want to use a CMS?

Do you have a preference for when you do want to use a CMS?

I personally use a CMS I built on CodeIgniter. I think it’s pretty fast and customizable.

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Hi @chrisofarabia!
Glad you could join us. :smile:
Really great question here for you @guilherme

There’s been a some discussion here on SPF recently regarding the newer HTML5 semantic tags and the best way of using them, as opposed to

tags as we might have done previously. How have these impacted your own workflow and what benefits/costs do you believe these have brought for you and your clients?

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Hi Guilherme. Thanks for your time to answer some of our questions.

Got a HTML5 video query for you. As a GNU/Linux user, I know it can be frustrating to deal with patented codecs on the web. It would be great if Apple and Microsoft would support open video formats that are not encumbered by patents, so we don’t need to host videos in multiple formats to maximise browser compatibility.

Do you know if there have been any signs that Apple and/or Microsoft are considering support for codecs such as VP8 and VP9? Is YouTube putting any pressure on those companies to adopt royalty free standards?

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Hi @chrisofarabia!

As much as I work with HTML, in some cases we can still have some doubts about using this or that tag for a specific purpose. I think that workflow-wise it has not changed much for me, but I like that the new semantic tags can help organize the code better. However, the div is still suitable for generic containers and I use it a lot. I try to keep the use of the semantic block tags just for their purposes, and that sure can lead to a lot of interpretation.

As for the clients, there’s no perceived value yet, in my opinion. The clients generally just want their websites to work properly. But that doesn’t mean that we should be careless with the code. And I think that at this point, using only divs without even a header or section tag is overlooking important features of the HTML language.

I think that there will still be more benefits in using the semantic tags. Even if sometimes there’s no apparent reason to do so, I think that’s our task as developers to keep the HTML code as organized and semantic as possible.

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Thanks I realise that questions slightly off-topic but as the newbie to html5 / css courses on learnable & here I probably don’t have a lot of intelligent questions to ask about the topic, will listen in!

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Definitely leaner! WordPress is way too heavy for many uses IMO.

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Agreed, but it is soo easy to install and then live to regret it…

Hi Simon,

That’s an interesting one, I was not aware of it yet. I could kind of get behind that, as I saw in a video recently, we are entering a “rendering engine war”.

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@guilherme oh this would be insightful for us. What are your thoughts on this?
@tevko what are your current opinions on tags?

G’day Guilherme,

I know the easiest way to keep code lean and tight is to be as minimal as possible. Just the site elements and content. But there is pressure to include a lot of back end stuff like Google Analytics, Various trackers, security widgets, Social media widgets, and the like.

What are the soft of things you think are acutally useful and “ought” to go on a typical site, and what’s just cruft that makes sites sluggish and hard to maintain. The suite of “necessary” extenstions in CMS often BREAKS the poor things.

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Personally, I think it’s an interesting idea – however, I can’t see any of the vendors agreeing to it, they’re always going to be racing to stick new features in for fear of being left behind.

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