10 Useful HTML5 Features, you may not be using

Tips & Tricks (10 Part Series)

HTML5 is not a new thing. We have been using several features of it since the initial release(January 2008). As part of #100DaysOfCode initiative, I have taken a close look at the HTML5 feature list again. See what I found? I haven't really used a bunch of it so far!

In this article, I am listing down ten such HTML5 features that I haven't used much in the past but, found them useful now. I have also created a working example flow and hosted on Netlify. Hope you find it useful too.

https://html5-tips.netlify.app/

Great, so let us get started with the explanation, code, and quick tips about each of them. You can follow me on Linkedin to catch on my future articles and work.

🔥 Details Tag

The <details> tag provides on-demand details to the user. If you have a need to show content to the user on-demand, use this tag. By default, the widget is closed. When open, it expands and displays the content within.

The <summary> tag is used with <details> to specify a visible heading for it.

Code

See it working

You can play with it from here: https://html5-tips.netlify.app/details/index.html

🔥 Content Editable

contenteditable is an attribute that can be set on an element to make the content editable. It works with elements like DIV, P, UL, etc. You have to specify it like, <element contenteditable="true|false">.

Note, When the contenteditable attribute is not set on an element, it will be inherited from its parent.

Code

See it working

You can play with it from here: https://html5-tips.netlify.app/content-editable/index.html

Quick Tips

A span or div elements can be made editable with it and you can add any rich content to it using CSS styling. This will be way better than handling it with input fields. Give it a try!

🔥 Map

The <map> tag helps in defining an image map. An image map is an image with one or more clickable areas within it. The map tag goes with a <area> tag to determine the clickable areas. The clickable areas could be either of these shapes, rectangle, circle, or polygonal region. If you do not specify any shape, it considers the entire image.

Code

See it working

You can play with it from here: https://html5-tips.netlify.app/map/index.html

Tips

Image map has its own drawbacks but, you can use it for visual presentations. How about trying it out with a family photo and drill down into the individual’s photo(maybe the old ones we always cherish for!).

🔥 Mark Content

Use the <mark> tag to highlight any text content.

Code

See it working

You can play with it from here: https://html5-tips.netlify.app/mark/index.html

Tips

You can always change the highlight color using css,

mark {
  background-color: green;
  color: #FFFFFF;
}

🔥 data-* attribute

Thedata-* attributes are used to store custom data private to the page or application. The stored data can be used in JavaScript code to create further user experiences.

The data-* attributes consist of two parts:

• The attribute name should not contain any uppercase letters, and must be at least one character long after the prefix “data-”
• The attribute value can be any string

Code

Then in JavaScript,

Note: For reading the values of these attributes in JavaScript, you could use getAttribute() with their full HTML name(i.e, data-custom-attr) but, the standard defines a simpler way: using a dataset property.

See it in action

You can play with it from here: https://html5-tips.netlify.app/data-attribute/index.html

Quick Tips

You can use it to store some data on the page and then pass it using the REST call to the server.

🔥 Output Tag

The <output> tag represents the result of a calculation. Typically this element defines a region that will be used to display text output from some calculation.

Code

See it in action

You can play with it from here: https://html5-tips.netlify.app/output/index.html

Tips

If you are performing any computation in the client-side JavaScript and, want the result to reflect on the page, use <output> tag. You do not have to walk the extra steps of getting an element using getElementById().

🔥 Datalist

The <datalist> tag specifies a list of pre-defined options and allows the user to add more to it. It provides an autocomplete feature that allows you to get the desired options with a type-ahead.

Code

See it in action

You can play with it from here: https://html5-tips.netlify.app/datalist/index.html

Tips

How is it different than the traditional <select>-<option> tag? Select tag is for selecting one or more items from the options where you need to go through the list to pick from. Datalist is the advanced feature with autocomplete support.

🔥 Range(Slider)

The range is an input type given a slider kind of range selector.

Code

See it in action

You can play with it from here: https://html5-tips.netlify.app/range/index.html

Tips

There is nothing called slider in HTML5!

🔥 Meter

Use the <meter> tag to measure data within a given range.

Code

See it in action

You can play with it from here: https://html5-tips.netlify.app/meter/index.html

Tips

Do not use the <meter> tag for a progress indicator kind of user experience. We have the <Progress> tag from HTML5 for it.

🔥 Inputs

This part is mostly known to us with the usage of input types like text, password, etc. There are few special usages of the input types,

Code

required

Mark an input field as mandatory.

autofocus

Provides focus on the input element automatically by placing the cursor on it.

validation with regex

You can specify a pattern using regex to validate the input.

Color picker

A simple color picker.

What’s next?

Well, I am sure, I have left behind a few useful ones. How about you complete the list? Please provide comments about this post and your learning on HTML5. See you soon in my next article.