twitter [http://twitter.com/webmonkey] facebook RSS Feeds Search for: Webmonkey The Web Developer's Resource Web Dev & Design Ajax Backend Blog Publishing CSS Databases Fonts HTML HTML 5 Frameworks JavaScript Mobile Multimedia Programming Security UI/UX Web Standards Software & Apps Browsers Software Web Apps Platform & APIs APIs Identity Location Social Web Services Reference Color Charts HTML Cheat Sheets Special Characters Glossary Templates Code Snippets Archive for the ‘HTML’ Category File Under: HTML , Web Basics Apr 30 2013 The Very First Website Returns to the Web By Scott Gilbertson Robert Cailliau’s original WWW logo. Image: CERN . Twenty years ago today CERN published a statement that made the World Wide Web freely available to everyone. To celebrate that moment in history, CERN is bringing the very first website back to life at its original URL. If you’d like to see the very first webpage Tim Berners-Lee and the WWW team ever put online, point your browser to http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html . For years now that URL has simply redirected to the root info.cern.ch site. But, because we all know cool URIs don’t change , CERN has brought it back to life. Well, sort of anyway. The site has been reconstructed from an archive hosted on the W3C site, so what you’re seeing is a 1992 copy of the first website. Sadly this is, thus far, the earliest copy anyone can find, though the team at CERN is hoping to turn up an older copy. Be sure to view the source of the first webpage. You’ll find quite a few things about early HTML that have long since changed — like the use of instead of or the complete absence of a root tag. There’s also a trace of Berners-Lee’s famous NeXT machine in the tag. CERN has big plans for the original website, starting with bringing the rest of the pages back online. “Then we will look at the first web servers at CERN and see what assets from them we can preserve and share,” writes CERN’s Dan Noyes. “We will also sift through documentation and try to restore machine names and IP addresses to their original state.” In the mean time, have a look at the web’s original todo list and read more about the project to restore the first website over on Mark Boulton’s blog. Tags: history , HTML Post Comment | Comments | Permalink Share on Facebook shares Reddit Digg Stumble Upon Email File Under: CSS , HTML , UI/UX , Visual Design Mar 7 2013 Simplify Responsive Design With ZURB’s ‘Foundation’ Web Toolkit By Scott Gilbertson Foundation 4. Image: Screenshot/Webmonkey . ZURB has released a major new version of its popular Foundation framework , a web development toolkit for quickly building responsive websites. The new Foundation v4 is a ground-up re-write that sees ZURB taking a mobile-first approach. Like its erstwhile competitor Bootstrap , Foundation offers a set of HTML and CSS building blocks you can use to quickly develop basic site structure and design — layouts, typography, forms and other common design elements are all available. There are three ways you can try out Foundation 4 . You can download the straight compressed CSS and use that as a starting point for your own customizations. Alternately you can customize your build of Foundation, including only the elements you need; or you can install the SASS version of Foundation and customize it within your SASS code. If you’re upgrading from Foundation 3 be sure to read through ZURB’s migration guide as the syntax for the grid and other elements has changed. The real power of Foundation 4 doesn’t really come into play unless you go with the SASS option. Thanks to SASS’s “ mixins ” concept you can now use the grid tools in Foundation 4 without littering your HTML with the various (purely presentational) grid class names. Using Foundation 4 within your SASS project also makes it dead simple to use only the components you need, for example, you can include the grid mixins, but skip the typography if it’s not to your liking. Be aware that the new mobile-first approach in Foundation 4 means browsers which don’t support media queries will only get very basic styling for the grid and other UI elements. Yes, that pretty much only affects IE 8. But, if your project needs more robust support for IE 8, there is a modified version of Foundation 4 with support for IE 8 (alternately, you could stick with Foundation 3). It’s also worth noting that, because Foundation 4 is such a departure from the previous version, ZURB plans to continue supporting Foundation 3 for some time. If you’ve got questions about Foundation 4, head on over to the official site and check out the documentation. You can also explore the code on GitHub — Foundation is one of the top 20 most-starred projects on the site. Tags: CSS , Frameworks Post Comment | Comments | Permalink Share on Facebook shares Reddit Digg Stumble Upon Email File Under: HTML , HTML5 , Multimedia , Web Standards Feb 12 2013 DRM for the Web? Say It Ain’t So By Scott Gilbertson So far it ain’t so, but some form of DRM in HTML is becoming a more likely possibility every day. The W3C’s HTML Working Group recently decided that a proposal to add DRM to HTML media elements — formally known as the Encrypted Media Extensions proposal — is indeed within its purview and the group will be working on it. That doesn’t mean that the Encrypted Media Extensions proposal will become a standard as is, but it does up the chances that some sort of DRM system will make its way into HTML. The Encrypted Media Extensions proposal — which is backed by the likes of Google, Microsoft, Netflix and dozens of other media giants — technically does not add DRM to HTML. Instead it defines a framework for bringing a DRM system, or “protected media content” as the current draft puts it, to the web. If you think the idea of DRM seems antithetical to the inherently open nature of HTML, you’re not alone. Ian Hickson, former editor of the W3C’s HTML spec, has called the Encrypted Media Extensions proposal “unethical.” Hickson is no longer in charge of the W3C’s HTML spec, but HTML WG member Manu Sporny, has already asked the WG not to publish the first working draft because the “specification does not solve the problem the authors are attempting to solve.” There are numerous problems with the Encrypted Media Extensions proposal, including the basic fact that, historically, DRM doesn’t work . Other problems specific to the current draft of the proposal include the fact that it might well be impossible for open source web browsers to implement without relying on closed source components. Then there are the gaping security flaws that would make it trivially easy to defeat the currently defined system. But Sporny raises a far more ominous objection — that the proposal in its current form does not actually define a DRM system. Instead it proposes a common API, which would most likely lead to a proliferation of DRM plugins. Here’s Sporny’s take : The EME specification does not specify a DRM scheme in the specification, rather it explains the architecture for a DRM plug-in mechanism. This will lead to plug-in proliferation on the Web. Plugins are something that are detrimental to inter-operability because it is inevitable that the DRM plugin vendors will not be able to support all platforms at all times. So, some people will be able to view content, others will not. That sounds a lot like the bad old days when you needed Flash, Real Player, Windows Media Player and dozens of other little plugins installed just to watch a video. That’s a web no user wants to return to. At the same time there continue to be companies which believe DRM is essential to their bottom line and the web offers no solution. That’s why Flash, Silverlight and other DRM-friendly plugins remain the media players of choice for many content providers. So the question of DRM on the web boils down to this: should the W3C continue to work on a spec that defines some kind of DRM system or should the interested companies go off and do their own work? For its part the W3C clearly wants to be part of the process, though it remains unclear what, if any, value a standards-based DRM system might have for web users. Tags: DRM , video Post Comment | Comments | Permalink Share on Facebook shares Reddit Digg Stumble Upon Email File Under: HTML , Web Standards Feb 4 2013 ‘Main’ Element Lands a Starring Role in HTML By Scott Gilbertson Original Image by Christian Haugen/Flickr HTML5 introduces several new tags that give HTML more semantic meaning. There’s