One of the main changes from HTML4 to HTML5 is that the new specification breaks a few of the boundaries that browsers have been confined to. Instead of restricting user interaction to text, links, images and forms, HTML5 promotes multimedia, from a generic <object> element to a highly specified <video> and <audio> element, and with a rich API to access in pure JavaScript…

Delivering great presentations is an art, and preparing the slides for them very much so, too. But we’re not going to talk about that. We’re also not going to get into the debate about whether to use open or closed technologies to create slide decks — this is something you need to hash out yourself, and there are some interesting discussions going on.

What I will talk about is how I (and you, of course) can use the Web to find content for your talks, record them, share them with others and save them for future audiences…

Building a beautiful design is a great experience. Seeing the design break apart when people start putting in real content, though, is painful. That’s why testing it as soon as possible with real information to see how it fares is so important. To this end, Web services provide us with a lot of information with which to fill our products. In recent years, this has been a specialist’s job, but the sheer amount of information available and the number of systems to consume it makes it easier and easier to use Web services, even for people with not much development experience…

Storing information locally on a user’s computer is a powerful strategy for a developer who is creating something for the Web. In this article, we’ll look at how easy it is to store information on a computer to read later and explain what you can use that for.

[Offtopic: by the way, did you know that there is a Smashing eBook Series? Book #2 is Successful Freelancing for Web Designers, 260 pages for just $9,90...

We who work on the Web live in wonderful times. In the past, we did of lot of trial-and-error learning, and the biggest hurdle was getting people to understand what we were on about. Over time, companies like Google, Yahoo, Skype, Facebook and Twitter managed to get the geeky Web into the living rooms of regular people and into the headlines of the mainstream press.

Now more than ever are there opportunities on the Web for you, as a professional, to be seen and to be found…

I’ve been writing JavaScript code for much longer than I care to remember. I am very excited about the language’s recent success; it’s good to be a part of that success story. I’ve written dozens of articles, book chapters and one full book on the matter, and yet I keep finding new things. Here are some of the “aha!” moments I’ve had in the past, which you can try out rather than waiting for them to come to you by chance…

In this article, I’ll introduce you to the fundamentals of PHP. We’ll focus on using PHP to access Web services and on turning static HTML pages into dynamic ones by retrieving data from the Web and by showing different content depending on what the user has entered in a form or requested in the URL.

You won’t come out a professional PHP developer, but you’ll be well on your way to building a small page that uses Web services…

I thought I could not be out-geeked. With a background in radio, and having dabbled in the demo scene on the Commodore 64 and hung out on BBSes and IRC for a long time and all the other things normal kids don’t quite get, I thought I was safe in this area.

Then I went to my first WhereCamp, an unconference dealing with geographical issues and how they relate to the world of Web development…

Using JavaScript has become increasingly easy over the last few years. Whereas back in the day we needed to know the quirks of every browser, now many libraries such as jQuery, YUI, Dojo and MooTools allow someone who doesn’t even know JavaScript to spruce up boring HTML documents with impressive and shiny effects. By piggy-backing on the CSS selector engine, we have moved away from the complexity and inconsistencies of the DOM and made things much easier…

Almost every movie has a scene in which a character pull the protagonist aside and says, “There’s something you should know about [insert another character's name here].” Most of the time, we find out some dark secret about a supposed friend of the protagonist or that the main ally is actually an evil overlord. This is that moment, and I am here to tell you a few things about our friend in the Web 2…

As Web developers and designers, we are spoilt for choice right now. To build a complex Web application or even just spice up a website with some highly interactive interface element, we have hundreds of pre-built solutions to choose from. Every library comes with widgets and solutions, and every developer tries to make a name for him or herself by releasing a funky JavaScript solution to a certain interface problem…

Website security is an interesting topic and should be high on the radar of anyone who has a Web presence under their control. Ineffective Web security leads to all of the things that make us hate the Web: spam, viruses, identity theft, to name a few.

The problem with Web security is that, as important as it is, it is also very complex. I am quite sure that some of you reading this are already part of an network of attack computers and that your servers are sending out spam messages without you even knowing it…

Website performance is a hugely important topic, so much so that the big companies of the Web are obsessed with it. For the Googles, Yahoos, Amazons and eBays, slow websites mean fewer users and less happy users and thus lost revenue and reputation.

In your case, annoying a few users wouldn’t be much of a problem, but if millions of people are using your product, you’d better be snappy in delivering it…