HTML5 Demo Sites

  • Article

In addition to my work on PDC10 and Tech·Ed Europe 2010 (stop me and say “hi” if you attend one of these events), I’ve been spending quite a bit of my spare time on an upcoming project for the purveyors of standards-based web development over at the finely crafted MIX Online. As part of that work, I often find myself looking for good HTML5 samples, demos, and sites that take advantage of technologies like Canvas, SVG, CSS3, DOM L2 and L3, and ECMAScript5/JavaScript.

There are a lot of fantastic sites that are included on the IE9 Beauty of the Web Experience page, but I’ve personally found it difficult to browse the list. So, I took the time to assemble a simple text-based version for your own browsing pleasure. Some of these focus on IE9-specific features like Pinning and Jump Lists, but many of them take advantage of HTML5 features.

I hate to pick favorites, but when I started this blog years ago, I made a promise that my posts would try to “add value” beyond just a simple copy and paste of the daily news. The value here is that these are my personal favorites (for whatever reason). Some of them may even redefine what you expect from a web “site.”

While they didn’t quite make my favorites list, here are the other sites (in no particular order):

You can find even more demos at the Internet Explorer 9 Test Drive site, and while it doesn’t look like it’s been updated in awhile, www.canvasdemos.com is another fun place to browse. Oh…have fun with these Asteroids demos too.

I know I’m a Microsoft guy (and I’m biased), but if you haven’t tried the Internet Explorer 9 beta with these demos, it’s worth your time. I think you’ll be surprised.

Have fun!