HTML5

One of things that we need to get used to when making the switch from HTML4/XHTML to HTML5 is the way HTML5 validation works, because it’s drastically different from what we’ve become accustomed to in previous iterations of web markup.

First, it should be noted that the W3C’s HTML5 validation engine is “experimental”, so it’s a work in progress that will likely see many changes over the next year or more. Also, we shouldn’t refer to it as a “validator” anymore; it’s now more accurately referred to as a “conformance checker” (although for simplicity I’ll be using the term “validation” and its derivatives).

If you were to use <strong> and <em> tags in HTML5 the same way that you’re accustomed to, it would be fine. As many have stated, HTML5 is backwards-compatible with old-style trends in SEO, accessibility, and markup, so your pages won’t break or be considered obsolete or deprecated.

But that doesn’t mean that some of these elements aren’t evolving. One good example is the use of tags to make what we normally know as “bold” and “italic” text.

Here I describe some things to take note of when adding HTML elements that are usually associated “bold” or “italic” text.