[andi*pandi]

Not to be a rehash of the ipad/flash debate, but let's discuss HTML5 here as developers.

Are you using HTML5 yet? In combination with older xhtml/browser/ipad sniffing or cold turkey?
Or are you not jumping the gun until the spec is actually finished being written?
Have you found any good resources for learning?

We are in the state of realizing that all our video/audio players are in flash wrappers, and we may convert them all. In the case of straight audio/video this isn't too bad, but some of them are interactive, with chapters and clickability, that will take a lot of development to redo.

HTML5
4.8.6 The video element — HTML 5
HTML 5 Tag Reference

[besson3c]

I'm still learning as I go, so take this with a grain of salt...

You can use the HTML video tags and the ActiveX video to create video players in Webkit and IE, but for now it looks like Mozilla based browsers are holdouts. I'm personally waiting until they make some sort of move, I'm hoping that I can get away from using Flash to create audio players, and am hoping I can skin the audio players in all browsers via CSS. I'm not keen on having to support three different display methods, but I can tolerate two, so I'm sitting tight for now.

If I was looking to support the iPad immediately, I believe that you can just drop in a video tag, use a Javascript method to detect whether the player has been rendered, and if it hasn't fall back to Flash. I think that this would be a little more bulletproof than user agent detection, but I haven't played around with this yet.

[Warren Pease]

Originally Posted by andi*pandi 

Are you using HTML5 yet? In combination with older xhtml/browser/ipad sniffing or cold turkey?
Or are you not jumping the gun until the spec is actually finished being written?
Have you found any good resources for learning?

We've started this discussion at work, and despite some initial optimism, I think the consensus is that we won't be doing any HTML5 specific code, because our goal is to support IE6. IE's are unable to render some of the new HTML5 elements (There are JS hacks to get around it, but we don't assume a person will have JS enabled).

Our discussion on web font's is looking to be headed down the same road. Font's often look fine on macs, but there is little control over what anti-aliasing options are being used on a windows box.

Here's a rundown primarily of CSS3 and some HTML5 (new HTML5 elements not included) in nice :
Web Designer's Checklist, Web Design Tools & Support : FindMeByIP : what browser am I using, how modern is my web browser, and what's my IP address?

[besson3c]

IE does have a lot of really IE-only obscure CSS properties that can be used to mimic things like box-shadow, RGBA, and gradients. Still, you're right, it has a very long way to go.

I hope that Apple putting their weight behind HTML5 will really get the ball rolling, because there are some very useful things in there that I'm looking forward to using, such as the new HTML form properties.

[Warren Pease]

Originally Posted by besson3c 

IE does have a lot of really IE-only obscure CSS properties that can be used to mimic things like box-shadow, RGBA, and gradients. Still, you're right, it has a very long way to go.

I've been using Sass mixins to add CSS3 effects to some of my projects. It'd seem like adding IE support would be as simple as adding the MS specific code. Specific -moz, and -webkit is already needed, why not one more?

[besson3c]

aren't those -moz and -webkit properties sort of transitional things? For instance, -moz-opacity used to be the way to establish opacity, IIRC, but now you can just use "opacity" in Mozilla/Webkit browsers...

[Warren Pease]

Yeah, they are transitional and may eventually make it out of my code. Though, I'm not sure at which version of FF/Safari they'll start working. They might remain simply to support for older 'supported' browsers that haven't transitioned.

[-Q-]

Apple has a showcase (along with some sample code) to show off some of the current features available:

Apple - HTML5