The HTML5 test gives you one huge, bold number denoting your browser’s HTML5 support level.

Simplicity is the key here: you just get a number. The number you see above is for Chrome Canary. Firefox 3.6.8 (my browsing workhorse) only scored 139 (and 4 bonus points).

It’s important to understand that this is not a benchmark. It doesn’t use any of the HTML5 features to render anything; the browser is simply asked, “do you support this?” and the site takes its word for it.

The “bonus points” come from audio/video codec support, as well as SVG and MathML for plain HTML. If that sounds like a bunch of acronyms I just stuck together, feel free to ignore it. What you should know is that the bonus is a bonus; not strictly HTML5, but stuff that usually goes along for the ride.

Another interesting aspect is that not every feature is worth one point. For example, the “Web applications” category has three tests, and is worth a total of 14 points. The “Gnolocation” group (under “Related specifications”) has just one test, worth 10 points.

So the number you get isn’t a count of features, but more of a weighted evaluation. Still, what’s great about the site is its simplicity – it’s a very easy way to convert people over to a more modern browser. Just have them point their trusty IE6 at HTML5Test, and then show them what you get on your awesome, modern browser. It’s easy to understand, which is the whole point.

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Erez Zukerman Community, Web Design browsers, html5, score, test, websites

Many developers know that technically, you can create CSS-only buttons with rounded corners and nice gradients. Since it’s often such a hassle, though, they may not bother with it. Button Maker is a tool that takes all of the hassle out of creating buttons for the Web.

Button Maker lets you play with three sliders and some color pickers, and you end up with comprehensive CSS for your button.

While this tool lets you create the buttons, it cannot solve the biggest problem with CSS-only buttons which is that they don’t work on all browsers. I tested the site using Firefox and Chrome and it displayed just fine. Safari worked too, but it lost the gradient on the button (the same thing happened with Firefox 3.0 as well). Internet Explorer choked completely, showing the button as a simple link and lacking even a background color.

I think they should put a visible alert for this kind of behavior or change the CSS so that it degrades more gracefully. Still, if you have the will and energy to fix your buttons for IE, this tool can provide you with a nice starting point.

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Erez Zukerman Community buttons, CSS, design, developer, tips, web2.0

Clip art can be useful for more than just boring presentations; if it’s high quality and in a vector format, it can be used as a basis for other projects, such as T-shirts, stickers, gig posters, etc.

OpenClipArt Library is a large site that features thousands of bitmap and vector clip art images. As can be expected, the content is quite often crappy. I’m sorry, I’m not going to sugarcoat it; if you’re looking for a nice image, you may have to spend some time sifting through a lot of pretty awful stuff.

Still, it is free, and some of the content is vector-based. You can browse by artist, which might help filter the amount of bad clip art you have to endure before you find something you like.

Search could be improved, too. It may just be a matter of policing tag usage; try searching for cat to see what I mean. Perhaps 10% of the results are actually images of cats; the rest is composed of pretty random stuff (green checked border?).

Criticism aside, this is a valuable initiative. The domain name is good, and I hope that, over time, search will get better and more high-quality content will be added. If you have any free clip art of your own, do consider adding it to this massive collection.

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Erez Zukerman Community clip art, clipart, free, graphics, public domain, PublicDomain