[bluejellybean]

I agree with this, I had no idea about the "good" practice in the first example. Is there any decent place that I can get truly up-to-date practices?

[benjaminpv]

You might argue that the HTML 5 Boilerplate[1] is a good starting place for learning about best practices. The code & accompanying site contain a lot of comments that explain why things are the way they are.

Problem is, of course, that the technologies used by a common page nowadays go far beyond the stuff present in H5B.

[1]: http://html5boilerplate.com/