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W3C Announces XHTML As Its Recommendation
miester writes "Since I haven't seen anything about this on Slashdot I thought I might submit it. W3C has officially recommended that XHTML Basic be the next step for the World Wide Web. Just when I learned how to do tables ...."
Of course, we do all realize that eventhough IE4 and NN4 are 90+ percent compatible, companies and designers still choose to DETECT THE BROWSER AND CREATE DIFFERENT VERSIONS.
TD Waterhouse, admittedly an online stockbroker, won't let you use any browser other than IE or NN because:
For your security to access the TD Waterhouse website you require either Internet Explorer or Netscape 4.0 (or above).
Once you pass their browser detection test you're forced to use javascript in order to navigate around the site. They're obviously very concerned about security. Heh!
Blog
Well, the W3 recommended the CSS1 spec, and IE, Netscape6, Mozilla, and Opera follow it religiously. Hell, most of them support some of CSS2. Most of the "standards" people talk about being unsupported are, in fact, unfinished. While the base XML standard was solid for a while, other standards that were needed to make it web viable, such as XSLT were not (although I think it just became "stable" recently). No browser vendor in their right mind is going to implement something that is subject to change.
Also, some of the standards are a bit "ambitious", and are therefore hard to implement without breaking backwards compatibility. Some are just a pain to code into a browser (like CSS2's drop shadow effect that should be able to affect any text it is applied to). Sure, someone like MS that has a "Microsoft Universe" to work with will implement silly browser specific stuff, but they will still support standards. Arguably, standards, in part, made IE come out on top in the browser wars. Sure, aspects of their monopoly put pressure on Netscape to make stupid mistakes, and also probably cut down on their overall workforce, slowing them down. The main aspect is that people will always want the web to work better, and standards do just that. The browser makers will cater to that desire or they will perish. Old Netscape died because it didn't move with the times fast enough.
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
but/> works fine in both IE and Netscape....just make sure to use the space between the br and the /. IE will work without the slash, but NS chokes.
Aren't singular tags closed inside that tag in XHTML? Like this:
/>
<br
deus does not exist but if he does
Honnestly, look at W3C's own homepage and see for yourself what clean HTML means. Already since the first XHTML draft was released almost a year ago, they have simplified their presentation, but the important stuff is still there: the documentation about WEB Publishing standards.
Sure, there are colors and neat formatting tricks, but most of that is done using CSS. Oh, there are a few icons and logos, too. Is the absence of frames and nested tables an obstacle to the content's diffusion? Well, admit it, it is not. All we need to find from W3C is there: the standards.
Also, while the obvious intention of XHTML Basic is to reconcile WML and HTML into a unified common base, note that Web Content created using this barebone standard with linked CSS sheets (as opposed to embeded style rules within the text) also has another strong advantage: it obsoletes the very concept of forcing people to "upgrade" to whatever latest version of a specific browser, which increases accessibility of the content and makes it possible to use "deprecated" browsers without loosing anything significant.
My own appreciation of XHTML Basic, from an HTML comparision point of view, is that it is about half-way between HTML 2.0 and 3.2: basic text and images, plus forms and tables, with XML rigor as a bonus. If your Web Authoring really is about content, not Flash animations demo, then XHTML Basic is all you really need.
--
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
Look deeper -- Openwave (nee Phone.com), Ericsson, Sun, Microsoft and other key members of the WAP Forum have representatives on the XHTML Basic working group. Also of note is that a representative Access Co Ltd of Japan -- the developer of the microbrowser inside the popular i-mode phone, and another member of the WAP forum -- is listed as one of the editors of the spec. From this list of contributors, it should be clear that xHTML basic is going places.
XHTML is a good thing because it's strict. It's much easier to create an XHTML-compliant browser than an HTML [insert any version, variant, and de facto standard here]-compliant one. Browsers have gone too far in forgiving mistakes and accepting bad code. Well, I don't expect bad HTML to disappear overnight, but XHTML is a step in the right direction.
And when it comes to "new" markets - like the Internet on small devices - XHTML has the chance to succeed quickly. You don't have many gigabytes to play with on a PDA or a mobile phone, so a browser that parses XHTML Basic will of course use much less resources than a bloated browser that caters for all obscure HTML codings out there. This is the chance to do it right from the beginning!
Indeed. The proper term is:
Web Programmers
*smirk*
Hay thar.
Do you even run a web site? 3 - 4% of users on my site are still using 4.x on various platforms. Do you want to tell them all to go away?
Having done quite a bit of CSS-P, it's actually easier to do once you bend your mind to it. Table driven sites are an endless mess of tags inside your HTML code making it quite unreadable. Instead, just wrap the whole thing in a DIV tag, and use the positioning code to place it appropriately.
This means that you can hand the page to some junior HTMLer and know that the page will still have a chance of validating and looking right when you get it back. You can also simply hand it to a secretary with a comment of "Don't touch the angle brackets", and they can easily update the text on a page and have it work.
The trickey bit is writing your page in a way that makes sense when it's flat. Because of the positioning code, The DIVs can appear in any order. When I'm working on a site like this, I try to look at the page in lynx. When I'm happy with it there, I'll move the elements around the page and check it with Mozilla. Lynx never even sees the positioning code.
I suspect by the time IE6 and Mozilla 1.0 come out, that the worst of the positioning bugs will have gone away so that it's actually cross platform usable.
It definetely works. My point is that it wasn't a systematic process of fixing SGML what made HTML work. Rather it was his misunderstanding of SGML goals what happen to made HTML good.
One can't and shouldn't judge people like Tim and their achievements from a purely software-theoretic point of view. Rather, he made something usable for the rest of us, and raised the bar for those coming after him.
Don't get me wrong. There are many things right with HTML... but for better or for worse (and it can certainly be argued) it simply does not reflect a proper understanding of what SGML was....
And, unfortunately, it's not a problem that can be solved with "Well, we'll put up a syntactically and conceptually correct website that's going to be rendered problematically, or not at all, on most of our client's browsers, in the hope this will encourage the producers to actually get it right"...
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
"But Lynx CAN display images. I run it in an X-window, and have it configured to fire up xv for each image on the page."
To be polite, why the fuck would you do this?
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Of course, it's also possible that Tim did misunderstand SGML, or just didn't care about its intent and saw it as simply a useful tool. But I don't know that that's true.
Eh, my main problem is how they deal with CSS, especially NS4.7 and its refusal to let CSS persist through table cells.
As for who is using NS4.7... well, my school, for one. Every flaming Mac and PC on the network has NS4.7 and, unless a student has installed somethign else, only NS4.7 I think I've talked them into including NS6 in the next network iamge, but we'll see.
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Maybe i am confused but does this not run direct interference with the "glory" of .net
-or at least i hope so lol:)
I am psyched about XHTML, but especially the ability to MOD it for specific applications. That's what makes XHTML Basic so *VERY* cool. I also know that whatever "Basic" spec we come up with, there will always be at least one feature somebody can't do without.
The feature I can't do without is forms.
All I want to do is take 1980's technology and make it interact with the web. If I could put my entire address book on a calculator watch, why can't I use a similar watch to exchange addresses, phone #'s via the web? Back then, I was doing a lot with a little four line LCD screen.
I think the spec is missing a very important piece of functionality -- a little interactivity.
Hey, you! Have mercy with the poor operators of that little site! Now thousands of people will follow the link, and the small Slashdot server will go down on its knees. It's Christmas, damnit!
Do they give you a bonus for providing a link to slashdot in your submission?
Ironically enough, the W3C uses a table to layout the W3C A to Z bar to the left, the news content in the middle, and the other links of the right side. And I quote..
<table summary="Layout table: The first cell contains a navigation bar of W3C technologies, the second contains news, and the third another navigation bar of W3C pages." border="0" width="99%" cellspacing="0"
cellpadding="10">
Yes, it isn't as hideous as some of the nested tables I've seen, but funny still that the W3C uses tables for layout.
The XHTML Pascal working group will be crushed.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
For table cells, can it inherit font specs? Or do I stil have to specify the font you want to use for each table cell?
But there are tables in the spec. The ordinary, much abused set of table elements aren't all available. Just a few common-sense table-elements for small-screen devices. IMHO, they're making tables what it was supposed to be: for tabular data
http://virtuelvis.com/
But most people can pick up html in a number of minutes - It's certainly a lot easier to pick up than XML. A huge % of sites on the web are made by amatuers (look at geocities), and XML is just going to confuse the hell out of people.
Excellent point. I never really thought about XHTML that way, but I think you are wrong.
Really, the main point of XHTML is that is should be produced by editors and XSLT stylesheets (reformatting other XML into XHTML).
However, producing a conformant XHTML document by hand is really not that much harder than regular. Plus, whatever XML viewer you are using is going to give you very SPECIFIC error feedback.
This kind of feedback was not possible before because bad HTML is very ambiguous. Bad XHTML is very easy to pick out by the parser.
So, in the end, I think that coding by XHTML will make your job easier.
EverCode
You know, stone axes were once "most successful, most widely deployed techology". That not saves them from being totally unaproppriate for the modern world, from any point of view except being displayed at historical museum. HTML was fine for academical knowledge-exchange networks. It's not appropriate for data-representation or webpage-building of today. And quality of current HTML (go find how many of them validates as HTML 4.0?) and nasty tricks you have to do to get something useful of it (browser detection, etc) is the best evidence of this.
And yes, quantum physics of today won't exist without alchemy too. But it's not the reason for quest of the philosopher's stone in 21th century. This quest was a total failure, though brought very significant advances on the way. The case of HTML is alike - it didn't reach it's purpose, but brought a lot of useful things on the way. But the time has come to bury it.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
I'm not sure if a move toward XML is necessarily a good thing. I hope I don't sound like a modern Luddite, so please hear me out.
/>" and "<HR />"), but we shouldn't use it for <P> or various other tags which normally had an end tag in HTML because it might screw up some browsers...? Can they even get the XML-ization of HTML right?
HTML and most browsers allow a large "fudge factor" -- your tag names can be uppercase or lowercase, you can quote your tag clause values if you want or not (like <P ALIGN="RIGHT"> or <P ALIGN=RIGHT>), you can use the header tags (<H1>...<H6>) in any order, etc.
In HTML, you can develop your own coding style.
I prefer uppercase tag names and tag-clause names, quoted tag-clause values for strings, nonquoted tag-clause values for numbers, free arrangement of headers.
Along comes the W3C, the "trusted" authority on browser standards and forces XHTML on us which has incredibly rigid syntax. Now it's all lowercase tags, all quoted tag clause values. We're supposed to adopt the single-tag XML syntax for <BR> and <HR>, etc. (like "<BR
There is even an "ISO HTML" standard which demands the header elements always be in "proper" order. I find it's much easier to whip out <H1> or <H2> when I need big text than going <FONT SIZE=+2> or defining a new style sheet class. Besides, the W3C doesn't want me using <FONT>, anyway...
There's an ANSI C standard, but it doesn't dictate that you always use the "one true brace" style, does it? I was taught code differently. But at the same time, I respect those who use the "one true brace" style.
Also, while we're talking about small, less-capable devices like PDAs, etc., how about people with lower bandwidth. I always try to make my HTML as compact as possible within reason. The damn picky Validator told me I had to add a TYPE="text/javascript" clause in my <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2"> tags because the LANGUAGE clause was deprecated. That's stupid. First, due to differences in implementation of JavaScript between the various versions, it's necessary to say LANGUAGE="JavaScript1.2" to tell the browser "execute this code using JavaScript 1.2 rules". I don't think there's such a MIME type as "text/javascript1.2" or "text/javascript1.1". Secondly (and this was the point I wanted to make), they're just asking for more bytes to be added to size of the page. I have many <SCRIPT> tags on this one page I'm working on. I want it to load quickly for dial-up users, and I'm supposed to make it larger? The TYPE clause above and separating space is only 23 bytes, but with many tags, that adds up.
Someone else was talking about <B> and <I>, etc. being dropped and being replaced with style sheets. (I haven't read that much of the specification so I don't know for sure.) Apart from the fact that style sheets are harder to learn, this (once again) slows down loading times because of the extra request from the client to fetch the style sheet.
And, with XHTML, every tag clause value needs to be quoted -- even numeric ones? That's unreasonable!
I realize we can't have anarchy and a standard is needed, but I don't think the W3C is totally in touch with what the Web has become and the business around it. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were trying to bring us back to 1993 with all pages being really basic and simple and all <H1> and <H3> elements having <H2> (not <h2>!!) elements between them.
What if a company has a standard coding style of uppercase elements, nonquoted tag-clause values? Are they forced to change?
Sure we use tables, <FONT> tags, and transparent GIF spacers like nuts. I'm sure it upsets Lynx users. But perhaps we're not catering to Lynx users. Most visitors to my pages are using IE 5.5, 5.0, or Netscape 4.51 or higher. Less than 0.1% are using Lynx. In business, you want an attractive page, and if that means making it difficult for one or two people so you can get more business from several thousand, so be it.
My apologies to those who prefer to code with lowercase tags, etc. We're all entitled to our own styles...until we get to XHTML.
Sadly CAPITALIZED are not allowed and only lowercase tags are proper for the spec :(
CRY
lowercase tags are a lot harder to read and parse when you are looking at raw html.
and it is easy to add capital tags to the dtd they are just lazy. :(
W3C--
msew
Then use or . (Some browsers like the latter better.)
I'm a bomb regardless
Most browser security problems are javascript or Java related. ActiveX is itself a security problem (it ain't related, it's the mother of security problems ;) ) .
The other browser security problems are far less common.
When these problems are reported the usual workaround is to turn scripting off, until you get the patch.
After a while if you have any clue you just keep it off.
And to answer in what possible way, go do a search on www.securityfocus.com for javascript, then you'll see tons of ways.
Cheerio,
Link.
Failure? Looks like HTML is pretty successful. Even PHB's can do HTML ;).
;).
;). Funny, sad, and nauseating at the same time.
XHTML basic may be for the lowest common denominator device. But evidence shows that HTML is almost easy enough for the lowest common denominator person
Because, fortunately as the previous poster said, Tim "screwed up" SGML, and so we have something far more popular.
Actually Tim didn't screw up at all. HTML is very good at what it does. Getting _people_ to make hypertext information available to other _people_. Not machines. People. As a result we have millions upon millions of webpages.
Now you have all those committee-heads trying to make everything logical, organized, nice and tidy.
For example: XML and e-business. I think it's ironic. You have all these people who were pushing EDI (which sucked and mostly failed), and now they are trying to put EDI into XML. Crap in a nice can is still crap.
Most of these idiots seem to think to get two different companies to talk, you should define thousands of _encompassing_ "standards".
Like that would help. As if the thousands of different business rules isn't bad enough. People should see what people do when communicating in a foreign country.
Buyer:
[points at object]
[shows 3 fingers]
Seller:
[shows 5 fingers]
Buyer:
[shows cash]
Seller:
[smiles]
[hands goods over]
You need very simple basic practical standards. Standards defined by committees tend to be complex and all encompassing, because you have to satisfy 10-20 huge organizations (who the committee members represent).
Watching all these consultants and committees propose EDI over XML is almost like watching people trying to run ISDN over ADSL
Of course having complex standards is good for the consultants, since the PHB can't say "Hey my 8 year old kid knows how to do that, you can't charge me that much".
Cheerio,
Link.
Note that XHTML Basic is a stripped-down version of XHTML for phones, etc. It's meant to be the future of WML, not the future of Netscape (uh, IE, Opera, whatever).
As for tables, XHTML Basic includes tables, but simplified ones as necessary for reduced screen real-estate devices, not tables as are used to layout complex graphic designs in HTML.
Give XHTML a try -- as far as web authors go, it's pretty much just using lowercase tags and closing them all. Or try HTML Tidy with the "-clean -asxml" options to convert your HTML pretty effortlessly to XHTML. Current browsers will work fine with it.
Disclaimer: I am a member of the XML Forms committee, a descendent of XHTML, but I had nothing to do with XHTML Basic.
This should make things better:)
..and therefore aims at the non-open WAP-standard. so this is (c) a good thing.
It's definitely a step towards device independant web browsing, but I think a better approach would be two streams. Some might think this an evil idea, but if this is the way W3C is going, with all its member companies dreaming of their own little 'devices', perhaps a stream for "feature rich" browsers and another for "feature poor" is appropriate...
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
No, if the XSLT transformation is done client-side it's less CPU intensive for the server.
XHTML 1.0 is the current W3C recommendation for regular web content (ie the stuff we use HTML for now). XHTML Basic is basically a subset of the XHTML 1.0 functionality and is "designed for Web clients that do not support the full set of XHTML features; for example, Web clients such as mobile phones, PDAs, pagers, and settop boxes".
Basically, XHTML Basic has about the same feature set as HTML 3.2: images, forms, simple tables, etc.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
is it just me or does the paper say that XHTML basic is a recommended standard for internet devices, not for the web as a whole?
Wow, that was one of the lamest first posts I have ever seen. You should try harder. It's 3am eastern, it's not like you have a lot of competition.
Internet devices or not how hard do you think it will be to usurp already heavily embeded technology.
XML is an effort from the SGMLers to retake the lead and bring HTML back to the purity of markup languages.
Originally XML was a simplified SGML aiming to replace HTML. So much for that one. Many of the original SGML problems were still there (in a nutshell too powerfull and general for the average web page).
However SGMLers learned in the process, split the original XML proposal into many subcomponents, including XHTML. They also learned that rendering/formating is important and should be part of a tagging standard (thus XSLT)...
We'll see if the world finally follows them in this third attempt to take over text management...
Professional web designers
Contradiction in terms.
But heck, HTML + Javascript + StyleSheets and now we are adding more closing tags and more tags. Oh, and don't forget the cross browser crap, browser and OS version compatibility, and oh, must add FLASH. Wait, we could even parse this stuff with CGI, ASP, or PHP. And don't forget your MySQL database and MIDI soundtracks. I guess we will leave Java out this time.
So someone tell me. Is this just all fvcked up or what.
true
.oO0Oo.
However, we live in a computing world where it is the job of the inquisitive to see what things will do outside of their design parameters.
Almost a definition of "hack"
When the functionality of the product gets tightened and the undocumented features fail well that's just too bad.
It's good though that the subverted uses get proper built in functions. That the font tag is being depreciated is a good thing. Just look at the spew that Dreamweaver etc. *have* to output to ensure consistency. CSS is a beautiful evolution.
I fully support XHTML and it's derivatives and I'm looking forward to swtiching my development away from SGML to XML based solutions.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
The idea of linking to anywhere from anyplace, isn't really new. Vannevar Bush introduced the concept of hypertext already in the 1945 article"As We May Think". This is recommended reading for anyone interested in hypertext as a concept.
The impression I got from BrowseUp is that it is supposed to implement some of his ideas. Whether they are successful or not, I cannot answer. Their idea however, is in no way new or radical
http://virtuelvis.com/
Weren't computers supposed to make our lives easier? To me it doesn't make sense that we are forcing what used to be a flexible, tolerant Mark-up into the spend-half-an-hour-looking-for-the-missing-forward -slash nightmare that C and (sometimes) Perl present to us 'less precise' developers.
I personally think it's swell that i don't have to finish tags (<br/> - come on!) or make sure they're all in the right case - let the computers work it out for themselves - they don't mind! really.
I'll admit browsers sometimes go too far - IE is infamous for ignoring MIME types and searching the content of a document to 'work out' whether it's html, xml, or japanese (and let's not talk about it accepting back slashes - just go to http:\\www.microsoft.com\ie\) but come on - we've already been robbed of the meal-in-a-pill, silver body suits and personal jetpacks - let's not start spending our days working for machines!
--
Rare Window - free your photos
My first thought was "basic? in html?"..i havent had my morning coffee yet..
-
If you use this standard, the page will work in pretty much any browser, including IE. Now, if you make pages like this [1] or this [2], then it's your own damned fault if it completely breaks in a different browser.
Yes, I am a Raxis.
Liberty in your lifetime
To say that you just need to create a new xsl file is kind of simplifying the whole operation. Because there are fewer formatting tags, you may need to redesign the look of your site, along with the navigation. After which comes all of the testing and retesting. Each time you wish to make a change, return to step 1 and repeat.
:^)). By giving them a halfway point, there will be yet another fragmentation in the browser market.
I thought XHTML was brought out to simplify and standardize the development of web sites. By splitting the language off in so many directions, the W3C is increasing the difficulty for web designers, software writers, and appliance manufacturers to create a homogeneous standardized internet.
I have been reading up on the WML specs, and am well aware it needs to be updated. However I also feel that appliance manufacturers should set their sites higher to the same standards as computer browsers (this sentence really didn't come out right, but you all know what I mean
The more options we give them, the more excuses they will have.
--
Rod
!
The person who designed that site deserves to be shot...
After you get by the frame code, find the right frame to view, and scroll past the JavaShit, you find this:
<table><tr>
<td>
Real good design there.
Yes, I am a Raxis.
Liberty in your lifetime
Yes, I am a Raxis.
Liberty in your lifetime
Yeah, I saw that & laughed, too. However, I think it's 'cos they want their homepage viewable with a nice layout even by people who's browsers can't do CSS.
I'm a bomb regardless
Being committed to open standards, I've been spending a lot of time on the W3C site, and when this announcement came out, I followed my curiousity to find out what XHTML is... only to find out that XHTML tags are case sensitive! This is a Bad Thing<tm> IMNSHO, because it breaks too many established conventions for no good reason. Maybe it's because I've used terminals that didn't support lower-case letters, back in the Bad Old Days.
The other major difference between HTML 4 and XHTML 1.0 seems to be that every element must explicitly closed, either with a corresponding closing tag, or the self-closing variety: <br />&Note the space before the closing slash, which older UAs will interpret as an unknown attribute, and therefore ignore, but XML UAs will correctly see as the self-closed element syntax. This is a Good Thing, because it becomes possible to parse a document without any knowledge of which elements require closing tags.
And that is important because the whole point of XML is that it is eXtensible: New tags can be defined and implemented without those annoying
messages. Once you have a UA that does XML, it upgrades its rendering abilities as necessary without opening gaping security holes or requiring a 12-megabyte download and install before being able to see some content-free gaudy animated graphic junk on a splash page.[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
There wasn't a link to his site you fscking moron... it's in his profile. Damn, why don't you actually look at the site before you post anything else that further highlights your stupidity. If you've read his site, and his comment about being "slashdotted", he basically refers to an article posting as a "slashdotting". ;-/
Just when I thought I've seen all the idiots, another one comes along
--
--
You are a fucking moron.
XHTML Basic is just a subset of XHTML 1.0 which already achieved recommended status last January.
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/
It is meant to be used for smaller applications such as PDA's and such. Personally I believe this set will go the way of the dodo. Designers will not be too keen on creating yet another version of their sites just to accomodate another markup.
I do plan on updating my own sites to xhtml transitional within the next couple of months.
-Rod!
No, I honestly don't believe that a stricter language is the next step anywhere. Remember, in the internet, a step that helps stupid people do more is key. Like AOL and IE. Its almost common now for people to leave out html tags and the browsers don't care. The other thing that seems to drive a lot of people is the way it looks. If they cant have browser specific custom scroll bars or annoying DHTML/flash they get bored. So I think the next step, if XHTML is even in the equation, are programs that write XHTML or some type of action that just makes XHTML more like HTML.
"Compared to the rich functionality of HTML 4, XHTML Basic may look like one step back, but in fact, it is two steps forward for clients that do not need what is in HTML 4.."
Is that saying that a simple HTML may be better for people that don't need everything in HTML 4? Id understand if it was "for an audience that cant read full featured HTML 4", but if you dont need something in HTML 4, you just dont use it?
Those complaining about the lack of tables miss the point. Tables really aren't very useful on a lot of small devices. People who use them for layout find their pretty design turns into crap on a little 150 pixel wide screen (and sometimes on a TV screen too). People who use them for tabular data still find that all that nice tabular data won't fit in the width of these small devices.
Leaving out tables emphasizes that you really can't count on a wide screen to fit all your lovely design and content into, and since the purpose of this standard is to have a simplified HTML for devices that don't fit well with the full HTML standard, it makes a lot of sense.
I just got my VisorPhone today and went browsing a bit using PalmScape. Pages generally were fairly readable except for the parts using navigation and tables and such that were expecting to fit on a wider screen, those fell into a total mess because they just don't fit on a small device. Sites designing with those devices in mind need to avoid reliance on things like tables- they just don't fit the medium well.
A lot of Professional web designers already pay a lot of attention to the standards. When you write, you have to pay a lot of attention to the platforms available, but new standards tell you what you can look for on the latest software, and what to keep a heads up for in the next version. Most browsers have some CSS support now, and that's very useful, for example.
It's really good to extend this to less featured devices. Plus, there is a better chance that they will track the standards, since many of them have not been developed yet, and even the ones that are often need a software upgrade to work with the Internet at all.
There is also much less diversity in the feature set supported across each class of device, so that makes it easier, also.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
Now we have Dynamic Positioning
But we really don't have that yet, and we won't until most people are using browsers that support it.
Seth
Just when I learned how to do tables ....
/. ...
Yeah, really. We're moving pretty fast here, aren't we? Hells, most browers now aren't fully standards-compliant (how that annoys me!). Also, what about web designers who are learning the language now? I've known HTML for quite a while, but my mastery of tables and their relationships with CSS has been more recent.
Nevermind whether XHTML is better or worse, this will probably confuse everyone involved with web design, from coders like me to browser designers.
BTW(and OT), I've recently switched from IE and NS4.7 to Mozilla 0.6 and I'm quite satisfied with it. Though I still have to use IE to post to
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
I know they aren't kidding when they say BASIC, but what do you want in markup that'll work on a wristwatch as well as my PC.
A sure sign that XHTML has become too BASIC(*) is when we start seeing markup like this: (grin)
* BASIC = Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
Ah, but it is a table of content, isn't it? ;-)
--
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
I assume you're saying that Tim misunderstood SGML's goals and mangled them in the creation of HTML, but mightn't it have been a more pragmatic thing? He wanted something usable, and he created it, and it worked.
The software field is littered with theoretically pure technologies which aren't widely adopted because of a staggering variety of practical issues that arise when ordinary mortals are faced with the task of doing something useful with a computer. Every now and then, someone with a practical bent comes along and incorporates just enough of the most useful and usable pieces of one of these pure technologies into a working end product, which people then adopt en masse, largely because the theoretical underpinnings, while imperfectly implemented, significantly improve on what went before.
Think of computing science and the concepts it produces as a Platonic world which effectively has no real existence, because of lack of practically usable implementations. The real world can only generate weak shadows of the concepts in that Platonic world. Cutting-edge software designers attempt to translate theoretical concepts into useful and usable end products, but these attempts often fail.
One can't and shouldn't judge people like Tim and their achievements from a purely software-theoretic point of view. Rather, he made something usable for the rest of us, and raised the bar for those coming after him.
Beginners now, instead of using <b> and </b> will have to learn how to create style sheets or use extensions to the DTD! This new move, if actually adopted by web browsers, will make even MORE people use Netscape Composer and other front-ends rather than realizing how simple HTML is... or was... to use. XHTML Basic doesn't seem so "basic" to code, removing one of HTML's great strengths.
Wireless clients will now have to send out more GETs to display data. If they honor any sort of style sheet, they're going to be following at least one LINK per web page. That'll use up more air time; services charging by the page or even by the minute will cost more for wireless users.
Can't handhelds and other browsers just ignore markups that they can't display?
Oh, hey, the W3 recommended it! I wonder what impact this will have on how Netscape and IE put together their browsers... hmm... well they've been pretty top-flight in sticking to spec so far, haven't they? I imagine they'll be about as compatible as they have so far, which is to say, very freakin' little.
I know they aren't kidding when they say BASIC, but what do you want in markup that'll work on a wristwatch as well as my PC. I know there aren't even tables in the spec, but it'd be a great way to "page" your friends.
It seems to me that this will be a big hit for "Push" content (like PointCast -- remember PointCast?) I just wish it could have tables and forms for more interactivity. I guess if you're getting pages on your smart watch it's not an issue.
Still I'd like the ability to punch in my zip code to get some weather updates, or something.
I wonder if they will make XHTML Basic less basic when people start adding tables and forms with XHTML Modules. Interactive sells. Is XHTML Basic, too basic? (No forms, or tables -- can Mod it though)
It's not just about device independance, it's about a change in concept. Tables were not intended to be formatting elements, but to contained tabulated information. Previously, there was no other way to do the same kind of formatting that tables accomplished, therefore they were used as such.
Now we have Dynamic Positioning, which negates the necessity to use tables for formatting. It can do everything tables can do, and much, much more. Being able to look at positioning attributes in their own seperate file eases upkeep by an infinite amount when compared to wading through multiple levels of tables that will break if just one of the tables is off by a bit.
Dyanmic Positioning is a CSS element, therefore seperating Style from Content(tm). If everyone started using tables only for their intended purpose, the searching capabilities would expand tenfold. TD stands for Table Data, not "A place to to put yet another grossly overused left-hand nav buried within 10 nested tables".
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