echo "hey, it works" > /dev/null

just enough to be dangerous

New look, HTML5


I've been serving this blog as HTML5 for a while now, but that was basically just a change doctype. I've now redesigned, with some layout inspiration from Daring Fireball, and I'm using the new HTML5 structural elements. My goal was to get rid of as much clutter as possible, both visually and in the HTML and CSS, and give myself a more enjoyable base from which to experiment.

If you notice anything broken or ugly, or you have any other feedback, please let me know.

Things I've learnt while playing with HTML 5


A random collection of things I've learnt while playing with HTML 5, mostly from errors thrown by the HTML 5 validator trying to validate this blog. There is absolutely nothing groundbreaking here, and it's stuff I should have already known (or more likely and frightening not forgotten that I did know). In fact, most of it has nothing to do with HTML 5 at all.

  • If you have valid HTML 4 and you change the DOCTYPE declaration to <!DOCTYPE html> things will mostly just work and your page will be valid HTML 5.
  • &#151; is an invalid character, not an em dash, and shouldn't be used. Use &#8212; instead. See the article on A List Apart about dashes. Of course, this has nothing to do with HTML 5.
  • When the href of an anchor has a query string that contains an ampersand, the ampersand should be escaped. So http://example.com?id=1&colour=red should be http://example.com?id=1&amp;colour=red. Again, that's not about HTML 5. This is actually my most common error, and I can't seem to fix it. Changing to an entity still ends with a raw ampersand in source. I'll have to investigate sometime.
  • The tt element is obsolete.
  • I use a lot of em dashes.
  • Spaces in hrefs work but are not valid.
  • Habari's autop function looks like it could still do with some work.
  • I can sleep under my desk and no-one will notice.