Thursday, April 07, 2011

50 Sites Committed to HTML5 by Name

HTML5_Logo_512While doing some research today for resources to share on my new, dedicated "HTML5" Twitter feed, @htmlUI, I started to notice the abundance of websites that have "committed" to HTML5 by embedding the term in the URL. Never mind that HTML, at least in WHATWG's opinion, is now a "living standard" not requiring version numbers, but this overt pledge of allegiance to HTML5 got me wondering: How many websites are using HTML5 in the their domain name?

My desire to answer this question is rooted in two things:

  • I want to know how many sites are using HTML5 in their domain name (just cuz)
  • I want to see what "HTML5 dedicated" sites are doing with these domain names.
  • I want to find new HTML5 resources so I can share the best with you!

Of course, some of the best HTML5 websites don't include "HTML5" in the domain, but there are plenty of lists that catalog those resources today. I wanted a focusing challenge.

The List

As best I can tell, there is no sure fire way to get a complete index of in-use URLs that can be searched for HTML5 (see explanation below). So based on more rudimentary, manual (Google) techniques, here's a list of sites I could find that start with HTML5 right in the URL.

To help you better separate the "wheat from the chaff," I've done some crude categorization:

High Quality Sites (i.e. the ones worth visiting)

Nothin' But HTML5 (HTML5 TLDs that resolve to sites…pretty much all wasted)

  • html5.com - Apple's got it. Redirect to apple.com
  • html5.org - Almost nothing. Just links to other useful resources.
  • html5.net - Coming soon? Sure…
  • html5.info - Almost nothing. Just another WordPress blog on HTML5…
  • [SPAM] html5.mobi - Genuine ad farm spam page
  • (No .biz, co, edu, mil, gov, tv, ly, us, etc.)

Unique Sites (Not straight from a can to the plate)

Standard HTML5 Site Galleries (dime a dozen)

Blogs and "News" (a.k.a. the Echo Chamber)

Real World Events

Reference Sites (cuz we need more than one HTML5 tag reference)

Everything Else

  • switchtohtml5.com - HTML5 "framework generator" (kinda like dynamic boilerplate)
  • html5template.com - Not quite complete junk, but close. 1 template. Lots of ads.
  • html5zombo.com - "Entertainment." HTML5 SVG version of Zombo.com
  • html5tests.com - A site to test browser HTML5 features…test "coming soon"
  • [JUNK SITE] html5sample.com - No value. Mostly ads.
  • [JUNK SITE] freehtml5template.com - Free templates! But zero templates available…

The Search Technique

One of Google's little used features is the "Advanced Search" tool, which it claims is used for fewer than 5% of all searches (I now know why). One of the options provided is to specify where you want Google to look for your keywords: anywhere in the page, in the title, in the text, in links to the page, OR in the URL!

The resulting search syntax is: allinurl: html5

The "problem" is that this looks for HTML5 anywhere in the URL. I really just want to look at domains (I don't want to see all sites that have ever used HTML5 in some SEO targeted URL). Even more specifically, I'd prefer to filter-out sub-domains, too, as it turns out there are many websites today with "html5" subdomains to deliver specialized versions of their content.

So far, I haven't found an automatic way to do that kind of searching. As is, only Google and Ask.com offer "in URL" keyword search filtering; Bing and Yahoo do not. Sadly, after all of this, a regular Google search for "html5" still returned better, faster results that the "advanced" techniques.

Know a better, more complete, automatic way to do this? Let me know. Otherwise, it's a bit of a manual game after Google gives you the URLs with your keyword.

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey we just updated HTML5.info, it's now a serious information website on all things relating to HTML5.. ;) So please update your post! And thanks for mentioning us..