Table of Contents for

The Modern Web

Remember the parable about the man who built his house on sand? Or the pigs who made their houses out of straw and sticks? Losers. They lost because they didn’t put enough value on the importance of structure.

To make good sites you need good structure, and on the Web that starts with HTML. How you mark up your pages gives them a solid structure both now and in the future. Whatever the context, whether you’re building a heavily interactive web app, a hybrid mobile app, or a one-page brochure site, putting a sound structure in place is a top priority. A solid structure makes your pages more accessible and easier to author and maintain, and helps browsers and other user agents make sense of your pages. A well-structured DOM can also give a performance boost, making parsing easier for the browser and requiring less memory.

Beyond simple structure is semantic richness. Giving the content on your pages this extra meaning provides an immediate benefit: It’s easier for search engines to crawl and understand your data. And longer-term benefits that haven’t even been invented yet may arise.

HTML5 and related technologies make all of this easy. Using existing and well-implemented methods, you can create pages that are solid, meaningful, high performing, and rich in data.