HTML 5 provides some great new features for web designers who want to code readable, semantically-meaningful layouts. However, support for HTML 5 is still evolving, and Internet Explorer is the last to add support. In this tutorial, we’ll create a common layout using some of HTML 5′s new semantic elements, then use JavaScript and CSS to make our design backwards-compatible with Internet Explorer. Yes, even IE 6.
Quick Overview of HTML 5 Elements
The HTML 5 Working Draft provides a new set of semantically-meaningful
elements for describing a typical web page layout. Using elements that are “meaningful” (i.e. describe the content they contain)
makes it easier for you to read and organize your code, and makes it easier for search engines and screen readers to read and
organize your content.
The HTML 5 elements we’ll be using are:
header
footer
nav
article
hgroup
Just by reading the names of the elements, you should get a pretty good idea of what they’re for, and that’s the point!
You can now stop abusing <div> in all your tableless designs, and instead make headers out of “<header>”s and
footers out of “<footer>”s.
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