Future of Genesis HTML5 and Best Practice

[bryanwillis]

With Microsoft stopping support for legacy browsers on the 12th of January and Firefox and Safari having automatic updates, I'm not quite sure there is much place in the world anymore for XHTML themes.

I've been working on an open source Bootstrap Genesis theme with a few guys for a year or two now.

However, I feel like a lot of what we're saying in the theme conflicts itself.

First off, bootstrap is meant to have HTML5 support.

Second let's assume in a theme I do this:

add_theme_support( 'html5', array( 'search-form', 'comment-form', 'comment-list', 'gallery', 'caption' ) );

Is it then necessary to do things like this within the theme if the theme is meant to be html5 and adds html5 theme support?

$nav = genesis_markup( array(
	'html5'   => '<nav %s><ul class="pager">',
	'xhtml'   => '<div class="navigation"><ul class="pager">',
	'context' => 'archive-pagination',
	'echo'    => false,
) );

if (genesis_html5()) {
// theme is html5
}

To me it seems like future themes should not have to do all those checks and instead of using genesis_markup just use genesis_attr.

<nav echo genesis_attr( 'custom-section' );>

sprintf( '<nav %s>', genesis_attr( 'custom-section' ) );

printf( '<nav %s>', genesis_attr( 'custom-section' ) );

Is there any reason why we shouldn't do this? Why should we still support XHTML out of the box when not even microsoft is doing it? Does anyone know the future on this? Will genesis_markup be deprecated anytime in the near future?

[Christoph]

Hi,

you should open a ticket with Studiopress at http://my.studiopress.com/help for an official answer.

My understanding is that Genesis (the theme / Framework) will keep supporting XHTML for backward compatibility. (Studiopress stopped selling XHTML themes only a few months ago)

IE8 - IE10 will be around for a long time, just like computers/laptops with XP, Vista, 7, 8 or 8.1.

---

https://www.christophherr.com | Genesis Customizations | Buy me a coffee

[Sandee]

Hi, Bryan.

I appreciate your feedback (as do other Genesis users, I'm sure); however this support forum is run by volunteers who are composed of Genesis users like you and I. I think your suggestion / inquiry is best directed to the theme developers at StudioPress, which you can do via official support on your account dashboard (send a message).

You can also join other Genesis developers in the GenesisWP Facebook group where some of the StudioPress folks would see your message if you posted it there --

https://www.facebook.com/groups/genesiswp/

OR

Share it with other developers who are actively using the framework (some of whom make contributions to the Genesis framework code) via the Slack group. Here's a link to an invite to the Slack team --

http://genesis.community/slack

Thank you again for your thoughts, and I hope to see you in either of the groups. 🙂

Sandee

[bryanwillis]

Cool thanks for the feedback guys.

Christoph these are current Desktop OS's that Microsoft will support as of the 12th.

Windows Vista = Internet Explorer 9
Windows 7 = Internet Explorer 11
Windows 8.1= Internet Explorer 11

Coming straight from their site:

As for the rest, there will be no more security updates, non-security updates, free or paid assisted support options, or online technical content updates. Security updates patch vulnerabilities that may be exploited by malware, helping to keep users and their data safer. Regular security updates help protect computers from malicious attacks, so upgrading to Windows 11 and staying current is very important.

Regardless, IE9 has nearly complete support for HTMl5 as does IE10, and with the css reset styles included in genesis it's basically full support

IE8 has gone from 5.49% total users to 1.7% in the last year and will continue to drop. Still though html5shiv allows it to support html5shiv as well.

With that in mind I can't see any reason why it should be supported.

Anyway, thanks again for both of your feedback here. I've never posted in this forum before, wasn't really sure how it worked.

Sandee I took your advice and joined the facebook and slack group so I'm sure I'll be seeing more of you guys around these groups!

Bryan

[Author]

Posts