HTML5 to PDF to HTML5

PDF is still the most used format to distribute electronic documents - especially for "paper based" workflows. There are obvious reasons still using PDF even if evolving technologies brought alternatives to the table.

On the other hand HTML and related technologies (namely CSS and JavaScript) has made a major step forward to produce enterprise looking documents with additional value a PDF cannot provide.

I do not want to compare the pro and cons - just want to mention well suited tools to convert from one format into the other.

HTML5 to PDF

Whenever you have to create "paper based" workflows based on data you already have a HTML (5) version from the best tool I'm aware of is PrinceXML.  Styling is done using CSS and JavaScript - no additional technology you need to learn.

This technology is not able to fully replace advanced rendering technologies like XSL-FO (and corresponding commercial layout engines) or even more advanced ones based on vendor specific layout definitions.
But there are many use-cases where you just have the HTML you have to distribute as PDF (e.g. confirmation of orders, archiving of a business transaction, etc.) this product might enable this for a reasonable price.

Note: there are many commercial and open source alternatives out there for this approach - non of them are as robust as the mentioned solution based on my experience.

PDF to HTML5

You already have PDF created within your workflow and need HTML5 to support more advanced integration in your content distribution you can tryout PDF2HTML5 Converter.

There are different options you can choose from how the content is transformed (one of them is creating SVG instead of HTML5 but this is a different story). The most useful conversion mode if the content should be further integrated creates:

• one HTML file per page
• all distinct block of content is stored within a div tag
• layout is applied using CSS
• some JavaScript

Note: The created HTML5 does not result in a responsive design (using absolute positioning and non semantic markup) - but that is more or less by design and cannot be solved in a general purpose implementation.

Both tools are commercial but in case you have a good use-case for one of the two mentioned conversion the price is reasonable. Try out first - both tools provide ways to easy try out the results.

WebPlatform.org

The site "WebPlatform.org" was introduced to collect best practices for new web technologies like HTML5. Many major vendors are contribute to the platform, e.g. W3C, Google, Microsoft etc.

Worth to take a look at.

To understand the state of the technologies so far - the site is provided as HTML5 - but try to play the intro on the homepage...still Flash on FF16 (yes I know it is simple a YouTube hosted video).

Time will change...

HTML5 for any device? yet?

Mark Zuckerberg made an widely recognized statement  on the usage of HTML5 for mobile devices:

When I’m introspective about the last few years I think the biggest mistake that we made, as a company, is betting too much on HTML5 as opposed to native… because it just wasn’t there. And it’s not that HTML5 is bad. I’m actually, on long-term, really excited about it. One of the things that’s interesting is we actually have more people on a daily basis using mobile Web Facebook than we have using our iOS or Android apps combined. So mobile Web is a big thing for us.

source: http://blog.tobie.me/post/31366970040/when-im-introspective-about-the-last-few-years-i
A more technical detailed feedback is provided here: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-coremob/2012Sep/0021.html

This means two major things:

• HTML5 is not ready yet (that is no real news) for a simple replacement of native apps
• HTML5 is the major enabling technology to deploy feature rich content to the mobile web.

If you ever tried to create a productive web application using the HTML5 stack which should run on "all" common mobile devices you are aware that this is a pretty tough job and still requires to limit the functions to a small subset of functionality and as a result UI experience. In case you have to provide a feature rich application like Facebook you obviously have to workaround hundreds of issues and the result is still not sufficient for an individual user on one device.

A very helpful overview of the state of the different mobile browsers Facebook introduced ringmark a test suite (including results for most common mobile browsers) which shows which relevant API function is implemented on a particular mobile browser prioritized by different levels of importance.

The current state of the standards is published by W3C on a regular basis, latest release http://www.w3.org/Mobile/mobile-web-app-state/

What you see in the test results is that HTML5 can be used in case:
you want to deploy content driven application focus on online access and integration.

In any case you just have to start small, test and verify the behavior for your defined target audience. The HTML5 path is definitely the right path to follow but still requires lot of work from either the vendors and the standardization groups.

HTML5 and XML

HTML5 will be the main syntax for the Internet in the next few years and will replace the today most frequently used HTML 4.01. Main driver for this shift was Google and is now adapted by all major browser / OS vendors and organizations.

The main advantage of HTML5 are the new amount of build in features which reflect most of the todays common requirements for web based applications.


Why XHTML 1.0/1.1 failed so far? It mainly was much to strict for the web community - the web and also the world is a non perfect place and therefore HTML5 is much more suitable to fit into this world than the XML based approach of XHTML can provide.

Does this mean XML for the web has loose and does not make sense at all. No there is still space for the XML based standards beside HTML5:

• XHTML5
  XML serialization of HTML 5 with stricter parsing rules
  mime-type: application/xhtml+xml
• Polyglot XHTML (see http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/#polyglot-documents)

Major advantage of using XML to express the content on the web is a much more easier way to integrate the resulting content into XML processing chains using regular XML transformation tool chains.

• Easier Reuse content for different channels using XSLT / XQuery
• Retrieve content as XHTML and extract only dedicated parts (views) required for different use-case
• Store and request the content using XQuery based infrastructure

The drawback is that today only the newest browser support the mime-type "application/xhtml" therefore for a while Polyglot XHTML might be a good opportunity to deliver the mass and keep processing use-cases doable.

A good summary of Polyglot XHTML and related XML based alternatives for HTML5 can be found here: http://www.xmlplease.com/xhtml/xhtml5polyglot/