Proposed Principles for HTML5-ifying Drupal // DrupalCon Chicago

These principles were proposed in March 2011 by Jen Simmons as part of a longer presentation and facilitated discussion at DrupalCon Chicago. People asked for a short version of the original slides (https://speakerdeck.com/u/jensimmons/p/lets-html5ify-drupal) that only contain the design principles. Here is such an excerpt.

Transcript

1. PROPOSED GUIDING PRINCIPLES FOR THE EFFORT TO HTML5ify DRUPAL 8 put forth by Jen Simmons, March 9, 2011 more at jen.cm/h6
2. 10 GUIDING PRINCIPLES
3. 1. SUPPORT OLDER BROWSERS Remain fully compatible with Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8 and other older browsers.
4. 2. LEAN IN TO THE DIVERSITY OF DEVICES Drupal websites do not have to work or look the same on every device. They already don't.
5. 3. MAINTAIN EXISTING FUNCTIONALITY Use polyfills when replacing existing functionality with an HTML5 implementation. Consider polyfills for new functionality on a case-by-case basis, leaning towards simplicity.
6. 4. PERFORM Slow performance is a problem. HTML5ifying Drupal cannot make Drupal slower. If fact, there are a lot of things about HTML5 that could make Drupal run faster. Let's do that.
7. 5. BE ACCESSIBLE If a choice has to be made between the recommendations of HTML5 spec authors and accessibility experts, choose the accessibility experts.
8. 6. GET SEMANTIC Historically, getting Drupal to output semantic HTML has been a very low priority. To do HTML5 well, content must be marked up semantically. This is a chance to get serious about valuing semantics.
9. 7. FULFILL THE COMMON USE CASE, NOT THE EDGE CASE If certain markup makes sense for the majority of usecases, but not all, let's do it. It can be overridden for the rest. Choosing to be super generic instead is not a solution for anyone.
10. 8. MIMIC XHTML. BE HTML. Use XML syntax in forming our HTML. Quote our attributes. Use lowercase. Everything we are already doing. *although maybe make an exception for boolean attributes like 'pubdate' Do not do XHTML5. Period. Meaning no mime-type of "application/xml"
11. 9. VALUE FINDABILITY. NOT MYTHOLOGY. Look to web standards leaders, not the SEO industry, for information on best practices.
12. 10. VALUE PRACTICALITY OVER PURITY. Just like the Design Principles of HTML5. If we have to ‘cheat’ to make it work, oh well. *We already have hacks to make it work in IE, why is this a time to get purist?
13. 10. SUPPORT EVOLUTION We will keep changing Drupal's "HTML5y-ness" over time. It's not all or nothing. It's a process.
14. 10 GUIDING PRINCIPLES 1. Support older browsers. 2. Lean into the diversity of devices. 3. Maintain existing functionality. 4. Perform. 5. Be accessible. 6. Get semantic. 7. Fulfill the common use case, not the edge case. 8. Mimic XHTML. Be HTML. 9. Value findability. Not mythology. 10. Value practicality over purity. 11. Support evolution.
15. HTML5 DRUPAL WORKING GROUP groups.drupal.org/html5 irc: #drupal-html5 twitter: drupalhtml5