Upgrades to HTML5 in Metro

[Angela]

Greetings!

I've been reading up on posts, but don't quite feel like I've found an answer to a question I have about moving to HTML5.

We definitely want to do this. However, I wonder if we should do it manually, or wait for an update to the Metro theme.

Will this theme eventually be updated to HTML5? (I'm assuming so, but want to be sure.) What are the benefits and drawbacks of waiting versus doing it manually? Is there a checklist of items I can go through to correct things that go wrong?

We are redesigning our website and I just got the CSS the way I want it. We have not launched yet, and I'm wondering if we should do this now versus later.

Your thoughts appreciated.

Thanks!

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Angela – I write fiction, review books and get walked daily by a big dog.

[Bill Murray]

My opinion is that you should switch to HTML5, but the way we do it makes that very easy. We do managed WP hosting, so the ease comes from how we've set this up, and that influences my answer to whether you should switch.

First, if you were a client of ours, you would not be changing the Metro stylesheet directly. You'd be applying your changes to it via a separately maintained stylesheet, with tracked revisions. The benefit of that is that your revisions are separate from the "base" design. That makes it easy to switch from one theme to another.

Second, when Metro w/HTML5 support is released, we will include both themes, the XHTML version and the HTML5 version. If you wanted to switch the minute the HTML5 version is released, you'd simply activate that new theme and adjust only your revised CSS, which might require no revision at all. Your site display might break for as long as it took for you to make those revisions.

If you didn't want to break your site for an instant, we'd set up a copy of your site on which you'd activate the new HTML5 version of Metro. You'd make your changes as your time permitted. When you were ready, when change a pointer that would point your site to the new HTML5 version instead of the XHTML version.

That process makes it easy to switch themes as they are updated, which is one of the features of our managed hosting. The process can be easy, but you'll have to measure how hard it would be for you to make the change in your current setup against the benefits of having HTML5, which will grow over time. At some point you'll want to use HTML5, so it's a matter of when you get on that bandwagon, not if. It's easier to do something like this pre-launch than post-launch.

Hope that helps.

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Web: https://wpperform.com or Twitter: @wpperform

We do managed WordPress hosting.

[Angela]

Thanks! That was my thought. I did try a free HTML5 converter, but could not get the fonts to resize properly. Maybe I'll have better luck tomorrow!

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Angela – I write fiction, review books and get walked daily by a big dog.

[Angela]

Any other takers to this question?

I tried converting our demo site last night and all the fonts were super huge. Tried again today and the site was really off, with the sidebar not appearing until footer, so everything was full screen centered at top. I have no idea what changed overnight, but I'm sure I have bit of code in there that did it.

I've gone back to the XHTML stylesheet for now, but would love to convert before launch next week.

Our demo site is dev.brownfieldagnews.com. I used the free XHTML converter at CobaltApps.

The only thing I DID change this morning from what the converter gave me was the font size. I copied the code, pasted at the bottom and changed to 62.5. Could that have done this?

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Angela – I write fiction, review books and get walked daily by a big dog.

[Angela]

I'm going to close this topic, but may start a new one later on for compatibility. 47% of our readers use IE browsers, 19% of which are in IE 8. I'll have to do more research on compatibility issues with HTML5 and IE browsers before we switch over. We will launch with XHTML.

Thanks!

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Angela – I write fiction, review books and get walked daily by a big dog.

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