via: A list Apart / by J. David Eisenberg
See what others have done
The first thing you can do to prepare for HTML 5 is see how other people are using it. A visit to the HTML 5 gallery will show you how several sites are already using the new HTML 5 elements. Use the source, Luke!
Now you do it
You can look at the sites, read all the articles here and elsewhere, and even read the specification—but none of that will help you understand HTML 5 as much as using the new elements. You can modify part of an existing site or experiment by creating new pages. I did this myself by updating a trip report I made for friends and family. (I never intended it for public display, but here it is.)
By doing this, you’ll find out what works and what doesn’t. For example, I discovered that, as of this writing, Firefox 3.5 treats elements like article and section as display:inline, and I had to explicitly set them to display:block to make them work as expected.
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What are you waiting for?
Although some developers have reservations about the direction in which HTML 5 is taking the web (and although I share these reservations), HTML 5 has enough new and interesting features to be well worth exploring. So, start looking at other people’s markup, experiment on your own, and go wild with the new form validation and canvas features. 