How long until you adopt a new specification (like HTML 5, for example)?

Question

When a new specification comes out (like HTML 5) it can be tempting to begin using its enhancements; however, how do you deal with the fact that not all browsers will be up to snuff with the latest and greatest specs? Surely, it's no fun having to code the same thing twice. While we can take advantage of things that degrade gracefully, isn't it just easier to use what's available to all of today's common browsers? What's your practice (or waiting period) for adopting new specs?

Answer 1

In the case of HTML5, I will probably no adopt it for any "core" functionnaly of a website before the required functionnalities are supported by the webbrowers used by something like 90% of my users -- which means, unfortunatly, not that soon for any "general" site :-(

Maybe when something like 80% of my users support the most imteresting parts, I'll start using those, and degrade gracefully for the others, though...

But you're not always the one deciding : your clients are often the ones who choose... And if they're stuck with IE6 because of company-policy and the like... and yes, there are too many users stuck on IE6, without the ability to upgrade / use anything else.

For instance, take the new <video> tag : how will you convince your clients that you should use it in their website, when they already have some embeded flash stuff that works just fine for more users than the ones who would be able to read the <video> tag ?

Answer 2

I won't use HTML 5 (which i really want to) until firefox and IE support it. Since most of my development is corporate internal, all that matters to me is IE. But externally, chrome (which is furthest along here) has the least amount of market share. If both firefox and IE support it, I am good.

Answer 3

HTML5 is a special beast. A lot of times it simply specifies the common behaviour as implemented by the browsers, which means there are parts you are free to use just now. If you for example use the simple doctype or encoding declaration, you should be fairly safe as far as browsers go. Some other parts add behaviour that does not really need to be supported by the browser much, for example the custom data attributes. Yet some other parts of the specification can be easily implemented by javascript if the browser does not support them. In this sense you can adopt the advanced form handling, dropping the javascript solution once all the supported browsers implement it natively. So there’s definitely not a single answer that would help you, and more so in the case of HTML5.

Also see many of the questions under the html5 tag here on SO.