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The Future of HTML

An anonymous reader writes "HTML isn't a very good language for making Web pages. However, it has been a very good language for making the Web. This article examines the future of HTML and what it will mean to Web authors, browser and developers. It covers the incremental approach embodied by the WHATWG specifications and the radical cleanup of XHTML proposed by the W3C. Additionally, the author gives an overview of the W3C's new Rich Client Activity."

90 of 404 comments (clear)

  1. Flash by mattwarden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Everything will be in Macromedia Flash soon." - 1999

    1. Re:Flash by B3ryllium · · Score: 4, Funny

      *ahem* 1997 is calling, they want their VRML back.

    2. Re:Flash by tratten · · Score: 4, Funny

      "Everything will be in Adobe Flash soon." - 2005

    3. Re:Flash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Modded insightful? Mod it funny!

    4. Re:Flash by SnapShot · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm going to play devil's advocate here and make the case that Flash is -- or, at least, can be -- a good thing. In fact, there is no reason that a lot of what is currently being implemented as Ajax couldn't be done in a Flash in terms of making a "desktop-like" user interface.

      Ignoring the bad flash advertisements -- it's not Flash's fault that it has been co-opted to create "smack the monkey, win an iPod" banners -- an application created by a decent UI engineer in Flash will appear the same (same fonts, same user experience, internationalization, etc..) on any modern browser with the Flash plug in. In particular, Flash can make excellent forms that support all of the bells and whistles that one would expect from a desktop application.

      I could be saying the same things about Java Applets, but Sun lost the pissing contest with Microsoft at the same time Macromedia was slipping in under the radar.

      There are downsides to Flash, of course. It can be bulky (especially compared to ASCII-based XHTML). You need a plug-in. It's a pain to work with for programmers that are more familiar with structured and pseudo-OO languages like C, Java, and C++ (how the hell do those timelines and stages work anyway?). And, from what I understand, it doesn't currently work with readers for the blind and other ADA requirements. However, Ajax needs JavaScript and a modern browser and applets need the proper JRE version and, finally, standard old HTML 4.01 forms basically suck.

      One last plug for Flash, with Flash there is only one point-of-failure on the client. If something's not working go hang out at the Macromedia forums and someone will eventually have a solution or a work-around. If your JavaScript/XHTML/CSS doesn't work there are a lot of potential places where you could have made an error or, more likely, IE simply is not supporting your standards correctly and you'll just ahve to find a work-around.

      --
      Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
  2. Re:JavaScript by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Javascript IS an object-oriented language. And fully-featured, except for things like lack of sockets.

  3. What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful
    "HTML isn't a very good language for making Web pages."

    What? Of course it is. It's perfectly suited for making Web pages. What is this, Wired Magazine?

  4. It wont ever leave. by Sinryc · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why should something leave that is so simple to use, and something so many people know? Hell, I can slap up a little page with HTML in about 20 minutes, but I can't do it in anything else.

    --
    Yay, I have a sig.
    1. Re:It wont ever leave. by Mr.+Hankey · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I suppose one might have said the same thing about DOS 15 years ago. I even remember an article in a PC magazine back then where a priest condemned the GUI, stating that "Icons belong in the church, not in the computer." Times have changed since then. I'm sure something better and probably even easier than HTML will come along and take over eventually, we just don't know when or what it is yet.

      --
      GPL: Free as in will
    2. Re:It wont ever leave. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I would fully embrace any new technology that's better than HTML if it were easier. Unfortunately, every new thing that developers think of does a million and one things with a million and one ways to go about them. Programmers get off on this sort of thing. "It can do ANYTHING!" Bravo, nerd, but you forgot about the majority of users along the way. Over-engineering. Learn it. Be aware of it. And for God's sake, stop doing it! Or at least hide all of the scary wiring from us who don't want to do every last function your complicated system does. This is one of the reasons I'm so against CSS right now. It makes my life harder. I don't care about the reason the cross-browsers are fubar'd, just fix it or I don't want to use it.

    3. Re:It wont ever leave. by Mr.+Hankey · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That (the relative difficulty) is part of why the current set of proposed technologies aren't going to replace HTML completely. Once someone comes up with a sane web-friendly document description language without the rendering ambiguity of HTML, that is also as easy to write for a human and efficient to parse, then we'll have a good replacement for HTML. As long as it's unencumbered by patents, of course. I'm sure it will happen, I just don't know when.

      --
      GPL: Free as in will
  5. FALSE by majest!k · · Score: 5, Funny

    "HTML isn't a very good language for making Web pages."

    Sounds like one of those stupid True/False questions from my highschool computer class

    --
    smattawichu
    1. Re:FALSE by jurt1235 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Sounds like Microsoft to me.
      Microsoft has been saying this for years. They invented AJAX as an extention to speed up HTML since it is just not fast enough in their opinion.

      I think however that a XML based document style, what HTML in essence is, is extremely easy to use with even the simplest tools. Any other document with that much layout options, needs extended editors (unless you know postscript out of your head, so you can do it in postscript (-: )

      --

      My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
  6. Everything since HTML has been too complex by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It hasn't been stated enough. HTML worked (and got up the noses of lots of I.T. people whose power it undermined) because even a child could do it!

    The real tragedy has been the unnececesary complexity of what has come since.

    A key reason why CSS has taken so long to standardise across browsers is its sheer complexity and contradictions of logic.

    Simplicity is the hardest thing to do. W3C needs to return to it.

    1. Re:Everything since HTML has been too complex by dolphinling · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No.

      The only reason "a child could do" HTML is that it doesn't matter if they screw it up, the browser will still display things, and do a pretty good approximation of what they want. With XML, one misplaced & or < kills the whole page, and plenty of people who use it professionally still mess up, especially in dynamic environments, and especially when outside content is being used, like allowing comments.

      A child, you'll find, can also do CSS. It takes a small bit of tutorial, and a lot of looking things up or asking around or copying and pasting when they need to do something, but they do it, and it works. This is because CSS has well-defined error handling. The spec says what to do in (nearly) every situation, so all browsers do it the same way, and it's not draconian--one mistake only kills the rule you're working with.

      CSS hasn't "standardized across browsers", because the largest-marketshare browser hasn't been updated in 7 years, since around the time CSS 2 first came out. In all modern browsers, all but the most obscure and least tested features of CSS render the same.

      --
      There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
    2. Re:Everything since HTML has been too complex by Fallingcow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      CSS hasn't "standardized across browsers", because the largest-marketshare browser hasn't been updated in 7 years, since around the time CSS 2 first came out. In all modern browsers, all but the most obscure and least tested features of CSS render the same.

      It's not just that they havn't updated. They also use a non-standard box model, and since as far as layout is concerned the box model is the most important part of CSS, most non-trivial layouts (and even many trivial ones!) will require hacks to look the same in IE as they do in other browsers.

      This, more than the failure to update, is the biggest annoyance for those trying to code standards-compliant CSS, IMO.

    3. Re:Everything since HTML has been too complex by ArwynH · · Score: 3, Insightful
      The only reason "a child could do" HTML is that it doesn't matter if they screw it up, the browser will still display things, and do a pretty good approximation of what they want. With XML, one misplaced & or > kills the whole page, and plenty of people who use it professionally still mess up, especially in dynamic environments, and especially when outside content is being used, like allowing comments.

      And that is bad? One of the reasons alot of websites are so broken is because thier developers didn't realise they had made mistakes. If an error is made in an XML doc it is found quickly because the parser complians, an HTML doc will just be rendered by the browser alot of the time exactly how you expected it, so the error lingers, just to rear it's ugly head at the least expected moment.

      Is using XML that much harder? I mean there are only those 4 things to look out for (closing tags, &amp;, &lt; and &gt;). I mean now they have 4 more things to look out for no kid will be able to do it right?

      DISCLAMER: yes, you should pass your code through a w3c validator which will find the mistakes for you, but that is not the point. XML strictness makes XHTML more robust, not to mention easier to be read by machines. Less overhead is good you know.

    4. Re:Everything since HTML has been too complex by killjoe · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Another reason was because you could learn from other people. I don't know how many times I have hit view source to learn how the author did something or another.

      HTML was open source and simple source. That's a powerful combination and a lesson waiting to be learned.

      --
      evil is as evil does
    5. Re:Everything since HTML has been too complex by P0ldy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It doesn't really seem fair to say that they use a "non-standard box model." They read the spec and interpreted it one way, the wrong way. This can happen, and the spec isn't always so clear. The real blame is that, KNOWING this, they still haven't fixed it in 7 years.

      CSS is fantastic, and easy to comprehend after an initial learning curve.

    6. Re:Everything since HTML has been too complex by b4k3d+b34nz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Apparently you (and Microsoft) read a different spec than I did. It shows EXACTLY how the box model should be displayed and describes how its dimensions should be calculated. They interpreted it differently because they thought it was a good idea.

      http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1.html#formatting-mode l is W3's spec with an example of how boxes should be renderered.

      From that page: The size of the box is the sum of the element width (i.e. formatted text or image) and the padding, the border and the margin areas. There is nothing complicated about that sentence.

      All that said, you're absolutely correct. The could've fixed their box model in IE 5.0, 5.0, 6.0 or SP2. But they didn't.

      --
      Grammar Lesson: you're is a contraction of "you are"; your means you possess something; yore means days gone by.
  7. HTML = simple. by ki85squared · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I know that as a novice developer, HTML is the more simple web developing language. I was taught HTML freshman year along with everyone in my grade level, and most people picked it up right away. If schools tried to teach php or something to 14 year olds, I'm not exactly sure they'd quite get it.

  8. Decent overview of WHATWG by dolphinling · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As someone on the WHATWG mailing list (I'm actually on the list of contributors for WF2, though for minor things), I'd say this is a decent overview of what WHATWG's doing. I expected something about XHTML 2, though, and a comparison.. I guess that's part 2 of the "two-part series".

    --
    There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
  9. History repeats itself.. by js92647 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This isn't different than saying that BASIC will go away.
    In my own opinion, I think that, like BASIC, people will make their own variations of HTML to do the job it's made for. Saying "it will go away" is total BS, because really, nothing goes away.

    Pascal is how old? What's Object Pascal? That's right, it's Delphi.

    Another media exaggaration. Stop with this blatant crap. Same has been said about C/C++ because of .NET and C#, but guess what: I don't see anything happening because you cannot remove a language that does a job that it's actually made for. HTML is simple enough anyone can use it, that's the whole point of having it as a "beginners" web language. It's the lowest common denominator, once again, just like BASIC was (and probably still is). They even rambled on how Java would replace C/C++. Jesus flipping christ.

  10. pick a standard by badriram · · Score: 2, Insightful

    personally, i would rather them build and pick ONE standard, that works for web pages and applications, and quit changes things as much. Not only does implementation of standards by browsers take a while, most devs cant use it until a significant amount of browsers support.

    So quit what you are doing W3C, pick standards you want that are important, pick features, make standard, and FREEZE IT. Dont change dont add, or remove features. Standards are meant to help, if they change more than some propreitary's format, it really does not help anyone at all.

    1. Re:pick a standard by Eideewt · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think they're doing all right. It's not possible to anticipate what we'll want to be doing five years from now. Standards need to be replaced. As long as they don't change too often to keep up with change can be a good thing. Especially on the web. Since the web is a content distribution network pages change a lot. It's not much extra work to stay with current standards when you're updating your page all the time anyway.

    2. Re:pick a standard by dolphinling · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Okay. So design that standard. Seeing as you have prior knowledge of what works well and what doesn't ('cause you've seen the successes and failures of current web languages), we'll give you 10 years--a little less than what current bodies have taken so far.

      Only caveat? It has to be good. It has to include any feature there's significant market demand for. (No, you don't get to find out ahead of time what market demand's going to be. That would be cheating.) It has to scale well. It has to be easy to author and easy to implement.

      And by your own request, once the time's up you can make no more changes at all.

      ...or we could just keep on the current track. Revising things as market demand changes, as new things are invented. I think I like that plan better.

      As a side note, you're obviously not familiar with CSS's versioning. Anything that worked in CSS 1 worked identically in CSS 2, and anything that worked in CSS 2 will work identically in CSS 3 (with a few exceptions where the spec was bad and the browsers did something different, so the new spec standardized on what browsers already did). Simliarly, WHATWG's Web Forms 2 (and where it makes sense, WA1) are being designed to fall back gracefully to what HTML 4 already does. Anything made for WF2 will still work in an HTML 4 browser (and in IE), just without WF2's special features.

      --
      There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
    3. Re:pick a standard by PapayaSF · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm all for new features, but I wouldn't hold up CSS as a model. Sometimes it seems like it goes out of its way to make things difficult for anyone writing a web page. Example: CSS took the totally simple CENTER tag and "improved" it with kludgy auto-width margins that don't work in IE5/Win. (Yes, I know that's Microsoft's fault, but even if it was reliable it'd seem like a step backwards.) And if you want to center something vertically, it's back to tables.

      Want to use CSS to create a standard two- or three-column layout plus footer that works cross-platform? Have fun! Something that nearly every web coder needs to do all the time ought to be easy. Instead, it's considered a difficult problem even by authors of CSS books.

      But hey, we can now put overlines over type! Everybody's been eagerly awaiting that feature, right? How about a future HTML that addresses the needs of those who actually create web pages?

      --
      Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
    4. Re:pick a standard by tomzyk · · Score: 4, Insightful
      What the hell are you talking about?
      So quit what you are doing W3C, pick standards you want that are important, pick features, make standard, and FREEZE IT. Dont change dont add, or remove features.
      Freeze it ?!? Are you serious? So, you're saying they never should have included background colors or images as part of "the standard" 10 years ago. Or never should have implemented CSS or EMCAScript or the OBJECT tag.... If that's your opinion, maybe we should still be sending our mail via stagecoach and steamboat.

      Standards are created to try to have everything compliant, no matter what company implements it. Sometimes you get companies that deviate from the standards because they think they are adding some kind of value to the whole, but that's their choice. [see M$ implementation of the MARQUEE tag. ick.] For the most-part, I think the W3C has been doing an excellent job at designing these standards and making sure to retain backwards-compatibility when possible. But there's no reason to forever lock us into what is currently technologically possible. Web Services would be a complete mess if there were no standards for different companies to agree on how they work.
      --
      Karma: NaN
    5. Re:pick a standard by mattwarden · · Score: 4, Funny

      Yeah. All I need is black text and hyperlinks so I can cite my source from within my document. I'm tired of web developers bastardizing HTML by using hyperlinks for navigation of some multi-dimensional document (aka 'a site'). Get rid of all those fancy extras like colors, images, tables, and forms.

      But, if you would, please keep the marquee element.

    6. Re:pick a standard by squoozer · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I wish the people designing CSS would listen to you. When I tried to convert one of my sites over to using CSS2 I practcally had to give up because the standard 3 column + footer implementation was so difficult. All the solutions I could find were just out and out hacks that relied on either java script or knowing one column was going to be longer than the others etc etc.

      I'll use CSS for layout when CSS is fixed.

      --
      I used to have a better sig but it broke.
    7. Re:pick a standard by tacocat · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I agree in part.

      Past history shows it is important to the community at large to establish and maintain a standardized means for creating web pages. I went through this once and won't do it again.

      But if someone doesn't spend a lot of time and effort trying to develop new standards to keep up with the new areas of developing technology then you will end up in a chaotic environment again as people are compelled to move into the new tech stuff (to keep up with the times, stay on top, keep up with the competition) without a standard existing.

      BTW, yes I have used 6 level indentations, so that H6 tag comes in handy.

      I would love it too if everyone would just figure what the heck it is they want to do and stick with it, but we don't know what we want to do with it because people are still trying to figure out what can be done. The concept that is presented as the overhyped AJAX is an example. It's not new, it's not standardized, it's not MSFT's (though they lay claim to it now), but it's a neat idea. It's also horribly broken and a very shitty thing to do for most websites because it's so broken. But people don't care.

      The PHBs will hear about AJAX and demand that they have it on their websites too. Even if they have no clue when you would really use it. And this creates a land rush for using AJAX on everything ASAP despite any standards or good practices. You can't stop it, those PHBs pay a lot of money for stupid work.

      AJAX would be best handled by standardizing something about it sooner than later. Too late and you have an area of chaos in the HTML user space.

      Personally, I haven't made a web page in years and recently decided to start making some more for a project of mine. Here's what I found out.

      All my javascript related books are all written in the middle of the browser wars and spend more content on getting around MSIE and Netscape problems than actually doing anything so they are pretty useless.

      I have a few books on CSS but no one actually talks about what CSS can really actually do. It's largely a matter of hit/miss to see what CSS tags have any effect on which elements. While I like the concept, the level of documentation on CSS is beyond pathetic.

      I would love it if everything would just FREEZE so I wouldn't have to buy more books and stuff, but that's silly. It's always going to change. Sometimes not for the better. I just hope someone out here remembers that a good web page is designed to be downloaded while you hold your breath (reflects how long someone will wait) and to have everything on the site reachable in 3 clicks from home (not only 3 clicks but available in 3 clicks). That's the best advice I've ever heard on web design and stick to it.

    8. Re:pick a standard by Archtech · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "...pick standards you want that are important, pick features, make standard, and FREEZE IT"

      Nice idea, with about as much hope of success as the equally good idea of freezing requirements for in-house applications. Developers have had to adopt agile methods because their customers, stakeholders, etc. seemingly won't tolerate freezing requirements. And standards keep churning because vendors - who drive most standards efforts - keep trying to get one up on their competitors.

      Besides which, it is true that progress is fastest when there is a seemingly chaotic froth of ever-changing methods. It drives users and developers nuts, costs huge sums of money, forces everyone to "waste" lots of time and attention on learning new stuff all the time... but in the long run, it moves the state of the art on in a hurry. As Churchill said about democracy, it's absolutely the worst system apart from all the others ever tried. We're not smart enough to far plan ahead successfully (i.e. beyond next year).

      --
      I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
    9. Re:pick a standard by onlyjoking · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A breath of fresh air to hear someone buck the trend of paying lip service to CSS and the W3C. CSS for layout has made web page authoring a nightmare for many developers. OK, you can blame IE but there's also the fact that the float model is much harder to implement than what preceded it - tables. After years of wasting whole days getting float-based layouts to render consistently I reverted to tables and am happy. The authors of the CSS specs should learn some simple guidelines - KISS and "If it ain't broke don't replace with something 'semantic' but a pain in the ass to use and likley to waste hours/days of developers' time".

    10. Re:pick a standard by onlyjoking · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I support the parent. CSS is badly designed and makes easy things difficult for the sake of being semantically correct. It's always been a pain in the ass to develop with and you'll find most developers who want to use their time productively developing dynamic, database-driven sites will still be using tables. That's not because they haven't heard of CSS. It's just that time is money to people other than the CSS/web standards purists and when you're generating rows of data a simple table row is much more efficient than its CSS float 'n div equivalent.

    11. Re:pick a standard by agraupe · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It wouldn't be that hard if IE supported CSS properly. I made a beautiful site containing a complex CSS layout, but, of course, once I tested it in IE, I had to do it all again without CSS.

    12. Re:pick a standard by Metasquares · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think that CSS only makes sense when you combine it with (X)HTML. I frequently hear about people who want to do something very obviously suited to a table (such as lay things out in a 3 column, 5 row grid), but don't want to use a table, because it "combines presentation with semantics". Of course, HTML being a markup language, that makes no sense - presentation is what it's meant to handle. While it is possible to do something like this in CSS, it's way more difficult and tedious than it needs to be, and chances are that your site won't display properly on all browsers (looking at you, IE) if you go that route.

      Use CSS where CSS is appropriate. Use HTML where HTML is appropriate. Combine the two to leverage what both give you. You'll get a more effective design in much less time that way.

    13. Re:pick a standard by Transmogrify_UK · · Score: 2, Informative

      If time is money, then the "most developers" you're talking about would be absolutely foolish to use tables for layout. I find it amazing how people continue make these uninformed comments on /. Most web developers I've worked with/spoken to actually DO use CSS and not tables based designs. It's not about abandoning tables entirely, it's about using tables correctly.

    14. Re:pick a standard by Crayon+Kid · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Speaking of picking a standard, what these bodies are doing in respect to the future specs of HTML et al reminded me of the recent ICANN talks in Vancouver. Read it, it's a humorous (albeit said) insight into why decision factors can never seem to agree on anything.

      --
      i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
    15. Re:pick a standard by justinkim · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, your experience is different from mine. I've worked at large web agencies and "Big 5" advertising agencies. Most devs I know (including me) end up using tables simply because we're required to support every browser made in the past six years and it simply isn't time and aggravation quotient efficient to try to do everything in CSS.

      Most folks I know use a combination of table and CSS-based layout. Tables are simply very easy to code for. It may not be so easy to radically revise the layout after the fact, but a good developer can design so any kind of routine content refresh won't completely break their code.

      Chances are that if the layout were to really change, the entire site is probably getting refreshed anyway, so preserving existing content usually isn't that important.

      The only time I use CSS exclusively is if the design is relatively simple and the browser requirements are fairly narrow. It just isn't worth the time and budget otherwise.

    16. Re:pick a standard by soliptic · · Score: 2, Informative
      I have a few books on CSS but no one actually talks about what CSS can really actually do. It's largely a matter of hit/miss to see what CSS tags have any effect on which elements. While I like the concept, the level of documentation on CSS is beyond pathetic.

      CSS books may be pathetic, but they're also redundant, because the level of CSS documentation on the web is truly awesome.

      http://www.dezwozhere.com/links.html

      I have yet to come across a CSS question that I couldn't answer within 3 clicks of this page. HTH.

    17. Re:pick a standard by RedSteve · · Score: 2, Informative
      That's not because they haven't heard of CSS. It's just that time is money to people other than the CSS/web standards purists and when you're generating rows of data a simple table row is much more efficient than its CSS float 'n div equivalent.

      Strawman. If you truly are rendering out tabular data, you SHOULD be using tables. No CSS advocate would tell you otherwise.

      If, however, you are rendering a discrete section of code, yes, you should be encapsulating it with a <div class="foo" and </div> pair of tags and letting a page designer worry about how it renders on the page.

      Any time our developers try to tell me that non-tabular output has to be done in tables, I press them and ask them why. Usually it's because they don't understand how to use divs correctly.

  11. Clients are becoming too smart by cperciva · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes, there is such a thing as being too smart -- at least if you're a piece of software. These days, if you're a web browser, it isn't good enough to know how to perform HTTP requests and parse HTML; you have to understand images in many different formats, interpret Javascript, keep track of cookies, parse XML, and maybe even execute Java or Flash applets.

    So what's the problem? People like having all of these features, right?

    The problem is that there is a hidden cost to having all of these features: Security, or rather a lack thereof. Remember that every line of code is a potential security flaw; and then think about the fact that FireFox is about 15x larger than lynx. Unsurprisingly, there aren't many security flaws in lynx.

    I'm not suggesting that we should never add new features. Adding support for embedded images, for example, was a pretty significant step forward for the web. However, every time somebody steps forward and says "look at this new feature which I've added to the web browser and all the cool things I can do with it", our first questions should be "how much code does it take?" and "how easily can it be done securely?" -- and if the answers are "lots" and "umm, I haven't thought about that", then it's probably not a worthwhile feature, regardless of the amazing tricks it can be used to perform.

  12. HTML Did Quite Well by MoThugz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The one thing that the author missed is the "Intention" behind HTML. It was invented primarily to create documents (hence, the availability of h1 to h6 tags as the article illustrates). Furthermore, HTML is oh so accomodating and expandable.

    Basically, every example that the author's given can already be replicated using current web technologies albeit via plugins and some scripting (server side and/or client side).

    Not bad for a language that was primarily intended to generate documents now, is it? I fail to see why the author chooses to make it very clear at the start of his writeup about how "clunky" and "unsophisticated" HTML is, but concluded it by saying how current innovations like AJAX is already making HTML5 obsolete.

    Nice writeup, but no clear objectives.

  13. Re:its a slow slow process by Rocko's+Modurn+Life · · Score: 2, Interesting

    HTML is like the mp3 format. It was there at the beginning and will always be there. No matter what comes along (PHP, Flash, etc.) and how much better (or worse) it is, HTML will still be there.

  14. HTML is fine by NittanyTuring · · Score: 5, Interesting

    HTML is fine. CSS is great. It's everything inside of that needs cleaning.

  15. Re:JavaScript by DrEasy · · Score: 2, Informative

    Not only it's object-oriented, it's actually a pretty flexible kind of OO. You can do prototype-based OO out of the box, or class-based with a bit of tweaking.

    --
    "In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
  16. All this dynamic stuff requires a server by Animats · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Web pages that won't run without a connection to the server are limited. They can't be archived. They can't be cached effectively. They can't be viewed offline. They often cannot be printed.

    Much of this "dynamic content" is annoying advertising, anyway. So it's going to have to be blocked, like popups and Flash.

    Worse, programmability in the browser means advertisers running their software on your machine. You just know they'll try adware and spyware if it can possibly be implemented. Keeping Java and Javascript in their cage is tough enough already.

    Web Forms 2.0, though, is a good idea. We should have had more declarative validation years ago. Declarative forms are good - the browser may be able to fill in fields.

  17. Re:JavaScript by moro_666 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I think we'd need a final standard for javascript. i have seen so much damn code duplication over the years because of differences in all kind of browsers, this can drive you mad. Even different versions of 1 browser support so many different things that it's just a mess to track all these down.
    if(document.all) {
        window.alert("Get a real browser man, IE is a bad choice!");
        document.src = "http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/";
    } else {
        window.alert("Yeah mozilla h4x0r! WTG dude!");
    }
    Adding canvases and stuff will be cool, but if you still have to duplicate the code, it won't make the web a better place to stay, at least not any time soon (until ie passes out and the latter being confirmed by netcraft).

    --

    I'd tell you the chances of this story being a dupe, but you wouldn't like it.
  18. Re:JavaScript by starwed · · Score: 3, Informative

    Javascript 2 is part of mozilla's roadmap, actually. ^_^ Check out some of Brendan Eich's blog entries.

  19. HTML is not the problem. by HoneyBunchesOfGoats · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "HTML isn't a very good language for making Web pages."
    Like most languages (including spoken ones), it's not the language itself which is the problem, but rather it is the inability of people to use it correctly.
  20. the future by lsblogs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All very nice, but lets face it, the big players cant even get browsers to work in a standardised manner for simpler things like CSS and HTML. God help us with more complex features... HTML will be here for a long time, new things will come out, and will be used, but html itself wont disapear for a long long time. There are far to many webpages out there that cant be updated, or wont be updated for it to just disapear. Not everyone will be able to use the newer, more complex features, so in effect, the rich will get richer, and the poor, poorer - as in general the ones with the money will have the ability to hire people to upgrade, or buy tools to do it themselves. Plus where do they draw the line, its great new features may be on the way, but most people know that software is usually out of date by the time the programmer has nearly finnished writing it.... Does this mean they will keep re-inventing the wheel and forcing people to redo sites each year to keep up with newer gadgets and gizmos? (saying that, thats pretty much the current state of things anyway) Then there will be all the extra processing power that will be required just to display what should really be a simple page.. I will probably have to upgrade my pc just to view the next gen websites.

    --
    Free Blog submission, find blogs, tools and more at LS Blogs
  21. Re:ATL GURU CHALENGE: by Vo0k · · Score: 5, Funny

    Anyone know how to render an html string to an hdc?

    echo $thestring | lynx -stdin -dump | dd of=/dev/hdc

    Why would you want to do this though?

    --
    Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
  22. The future of HTML/CSS/JavaScript is ... C++ ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Check out this open-source project http://witty.sourceforge.net/ which kind of ports the Qt API to web application programming.

    Makes perfect sense for people developing web applications who do not want to know about the latest AJAX/JavaScript/CSS buzz.

  23. Re:Web Forms 2.0 by dolphinling · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The point is that Firefox, Safari, and Opera will all have implementations within a few years, and there is a library being made that an author can include in the page to make IE work. So implementation won't be a problem for long.

    There's also the use case of people who wouldn't bother with client-side validation in the first place, but will with WF2. After all, typing <input type='email'> is just as hard as easy as typing <input type='text'>, and will fall back to a normal text input in older browsers. Nothing lost, some gained.

    --
    There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.
  24. Round 2 by umbrellasd · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I work with Javascript every day to achieve advanced web application functionality. It is object-oriented now, but I'm not much for alert messages as my preferred method of debugging. It does not have to be that way, true. But I think more than anything that the reason I really do not enjoy using Javascript is that tools support is very limited.

    Even now, we are still in the world of dueling standards on the web where what would really be best is a single standard. I write JScript for my Internet Explorer web applications. Javascript for non-Microsoft browsers. I want a single language, and I want a single development environment that can give me "Intellisense" (object delving and code completion), and dynamic help that is linked against Javascript/JScript reference material. I want that environment to target all browser platforms that comply with a standard, and I really do not want people to continue disagreeing on the standard because then tool support will lag and my work is made more difficult.

    When I glanced through the referenced article, I was rolling my eyes, because here again you have two answers to similar problems, each with support from different camps and the result will probably be more browser compatibility work for every developer.

    After many years, you get really tired of people coming up with "that one extra feature" or "that totally amazing completely different way to solve the same problem". Each EMCAScript engine on each browser adheres to a slightly different specification. Lovely. CSS is exactly the same. There you have a single set of specifications, but you still have people interpreting things in vastly different ways and Internet Explorer still (a few years) has trouble with something as simple as bottom:0.

    Anyway. I think the real opportunities in the future are for much better tools and a much stronger effort to reach standards agreement and compliance. I could care less which of the two standards described in the article actually becomes mainstream. They are all smart people. I'm quite certain either standard will get us great benefits and move us along nicely. Pick one and run with it. That would be nice. But, no. Everyone wants "their approach" to be the one because they are so certain it is "infinitely better" than what the other 30 brilliant guys came up with.

    That said, I doubt we are going to see convergence. The things that really converge and become solid standards are the things that have been around so long and are used so ubiquitously, no one finds it possible or worthwhile to make changes because there are lower fruit to pick on the "It's new, New, NEW!" tree. Those two standards in the article will likely not converge for 5 years, minimum.

    1. Re:Round 2 by roman_mir · · Score: 3, Informative

      Just to make life easier, use FF with dev-tools (when installing select to install with dev-tools,) this gives you the DOM inspector. For JS itself install Venkman

  25. give it a rest! by penguin-collective · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We have barely scratched the surface of what is possible with the current generations of HTML, JavaScript, and SVG. The two areas where a little bit of standardization would be nice would be in support for drag-and-drop (for simplifying uploads) and rich text editing. Other than that, these people should just give it a rest and let us digest the current set of technologies.

  26. Re:JavaScript by Vo0k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The problem is implementation of Javascript/DOM. Every browser does this differently. Some in a broken way.
    And Javascript still lacks access to some essential stuff. Try grabbing and processing the binary data of a linked image. Try to make a program run continuously without hogging 100% the CPU and without kludges like calling itself within given timeout (and losing all the local context in the meantime). sched_yield() in js anyone? fork? use strict; ? kill? At best you find ugly kludges. The language seems like it was still in early development phase, far pre-alpha with specs still in early drafts.

    --
    Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
  27. html isn't going anywhere by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Insightful

    it's like ipv6: obviously superior to what we got, but too complicted or costly to implement

    there isn't a lot of overhead required to write an html webpage, there is no educational or infrastructure barrier to entry

    that defines the success of html

    meanwhile, all the replacement specs i see trotted out all over the place are often far more complicated. and i recognize that this is by design, not a failure to grasp the concept of simplicity. they are so complicated because they are trying to do so many things, these more sophisiticed protocols and doc templates. well then that's the error: setting your sites too high. people don't want more options, they just want to do something

    this megalomaniacal approach: "do everything" is not a superior way to design a spec. like electronics makers putting television on cellphones or ipods now. this is so stupid, and doomed to failure. christ, people just want to make phone calls

    so what new webservices or protocols will be successful? THE SIMPLE ONES. i even have an example: rss. simple and straightforward. a raft of services similar to rss aren't nearly as successful. too complicated

    KISS, people, KISS

    never forget the KISS principle: Keep It Simple, Stupid!

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  28. 3D Graphics by hayriye · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From the article:
    And why, in this era of 3D-accelerated graphics cards and sophisticated user interfaces, are Web pages limited to clunky text boxes and radio buttons for user input?
    Why do we need sophisticated user interfaces? The existing controls are easy and universally understood.
  29. Re:Web Forms 2.0 by panaceaa · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As a web developer, I find that the advantage of Web Forms 2.0 is not field validation, but the formal declaration of field types so that browsers can assist users to enter proper data without getting confused. For example, the 'email' input type can offer to bring up the user's address book, and can provide context-based feedback of errors on manually typed addresses. If browsers truly adopted Web Forms 2.0, web developers could stop worrying about writing form validation Javascript while providing a more standardized interface for entering strongly-typed data.

  30. everything must go! by 5plicer · · Score: 2, Insightful

    let's just deprecate all tag except div :p

    --
    The bits on the bus go on and off... on and off... on and off...
  31. HTML is good by mymaxx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    HTML is good for making web pages, but bad for web apps. For that you have DHTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, etc...

  32. Why use XHTML when IE cannot parse it? by perkr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As long as IE doesn't understand application/xhtml+xml I see no reason to switch.

    Read more about it here: Sending XHTML as text/html Considered Harmful.

  33. Re:its a slow slow process by nicklott · · Score: 2, Insightful
    HTML is never going away. There 3 gazillion sites out there all built with HTML. Which browser is going to be the first to stop supporting HTML?

    5 years ago XHTML was going to be a transitional phase on the way to XML. There was actually a small window of opportunity when a switch was possible. A period when most site builders were still programmers and the web was small. Now, however, everyone builds web pages and the web is almost infinite. Inertia now rules.

    Of course the browsers don't have to stop supporting HTML, they can just start supporting the new replacement. However, how many years has it taken to get the three major browsers to render any given valid HTML page in the same way? They're close now but it can still be a pain in the arse.

  34. Re:HTML and CSS by guet · · Score: 2, Funny

    HTML along the lines of using h1 through h6 is foolish, but I've (literally) never seen anyone use any heading smaller than h2.

    That's funny, because I could have sworn I saw an H4 tag around here somewhere, perhaps you should check what tag wraps the head of your post?

  35. Re:Web Forms 2.0 by tonydiesel · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You're missing the point. Of course you will still have to do server side validation (at least, you should). The advantage here is that you provide a better user experience. The user can click the "Submit" button (or whatever) and instantly know if the entered data is valid. Sure, you can fake your way around it, but it isn't designed to prevent script kiddies from doing their stuff, its to tell Grandpa that he mistyped when he entered his email address.

  36. Re:No it is not. by SolitaryMan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's everything inside of <script></script> that needs cleaning.

    It is so dirty because HTML is not fine in the first place. Many JS on the page usually just compensates for HTML incapability of providing good widget set and rich controls. I don't like JS, and I think that controls such as trees, popups etc. is a MUST for web markup.

    --
    May Peace Prevail On Earth
  37. I use H1 through H6 by Christian+Engstrom · · Score: 2, Informative
    HTML along the lines of using h1 through h6 is foolish, but I've (literally) never seen anyone use any heading smaller than h2.
    I use all 6 heading sizes in the documentation I am writing for my open source project, and I don't think it looks that bad. Sure, I could have used some complicated/sophisticated publishing system that did all the layout as flash animations or whatever, but I think it's an advantage to be able to write the documentation as straight-forward text files that can be included in the tar-ball and that anyone can read with any browser.

    Different headings are quite useful when you're trying to make documentation readable, so I really don't understand what the author of the article (and possibly you) have against them.

    --
    Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
  38. CSS by zoeblade · · Score: 4, Informative

    CSS took the totally simple CENTER tag and "improved" it with kludgy auto-width margins that don't work in IE5/Win.

    text-align: center;

    What CSS does is seperate style from actual content, and also seperate style intended for monitors from, say, style intended for a printed copy of the page. Once you start to think in this mindset, it makes a lot more sense than using HTML to define both the content and style in the same place, all mixed in together.

    It can also save a lot of time. For example, with CSS you can specify that every h1 element should be centered with a single line of code, which is much quicker than specifying the alignment of every single h1 element by hand in every page, one at a time.

    That and it saves a lot of bandwidth, as each page can link to the same CSS file.

    1. Re:CSS by loquacious+d · · Score: 2, Informative

      .foo { display: table-cell; vertical-align: center; }

      Not sure about IE compatibility. But I'd call that IE's fault.

    2. Re:CSS by gallen1234 · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think you missed the gp's point. He wants to center a container object, not text or the text within a container. text-align is a text property. If you apply it to a container object the results won't be what you needed. Try an example with and see what you get for your trouble. The output won't be a table centered horizontally on the page.

    3. Re:CSS by zoeblade · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think you missed the gp's point. He wants to center a container object, not text or the text within a container. text-align is a text property.

      While margin: 0 auto; is the correct way of doing this, IE demands you use text-align anyway, even though it's intended for text (this is IE's fault, not CSS's). Use text-align: center; on the element that the one you want to center is inside of, and then text-align: left; to counteract it again for the element itself.

      Which is one of the many reasons why I don't like Internet Explorer.

  39. Re:Packaged HTML by vidarh · · Score: 2, Informative
    Except that multiple webpages often share content and rely on caching to prevent repeated requests, HTTP 1.1 has allowed multiple requests to go over the same connection for ages, clients use multiple connections mainly because they specifically DON'T want users to have to wait until the whole page is loaded before starting to see other content appear, a significant portion of pages today are dynamically generated - in which case a packaging system like you suggest would actually add load to the server -, and it already IS possible to compress pages if the client sents the appropriate Accept header.

    And what about clients that don't want or don't need the flash, javascript, css files, images or other things you think your page "depends on"?

    What you are suggesting is a poor solution to something that isn't a real problem that would likely do more harm than good.

  40. Re:JavaScript by EntropyEngine · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I loathe having to use JavaScript and usually work to avoid having to us it at all.

    In my experience, more often than not, JavaScript is a hinderance and is the cause of more problems than it solves...

  41. Improvements are eventually going to come... by Regnard · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My take on this matter is that HTML is good up to until a certain point (e.g. creating a richer user experience). As a standard, I'd take some of the tweaks the working groups are proposing (e.g. Web Forms, Web Applications) but I'd avoid too complex additions (e.g. canvas).

    I've taught web programming and HTML is really one of the "bright spots" that students appreciate and relatively easy to grasp. I'd hate to see some additions that would muddle the simplicity of HTML. So in the end, improvements are welcome, but avoid "improving" too much.

    --
    Need a color? Try 100 random colors
  42. HTML is dead... long live HTML! by shotgunefx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "HTML isn't a very good language for making Web pages."

    This is based on what? That it's not postscript or flash? Granted there are improvments that could be made, but by and large, it works wonderfully. A simple and universal UI and a markup that almost anyone can learn.

    How is bloating it to do everything you could ever want going to improve things?

    Why do I need to be able to use it as an etch-a-sketch? You want to be able to draw or run around a maze? Get a plugin. Now if they want to standardize plugins, that's another issue.

    Forms could use some work, but personally, I think the limited control of layout is a big plus. Almost anyone who has filled out a form, can figure out any other form. Client side validation? What's the point? Still need to validate server side. Maybe it saves a trip, but that is probably negated by all the extra markup that will be coming over the pipe.

    I like the direction google is taking things. I think incorporating a few smaller changes and we can get most of what's desirable.

    <RANT>
    And author control over auto-completion of form elements? Maybe an author hint, but control? Um, no. Fuck off. For some reason, this somewhat benign point really vexes me. Not to go off on too much of a Dennis Leary tangent, but goddamn it, I'm getting sick of computers and devices doing what they feel like and not what I tell them to. Like power buttons. I want a power button that shuts off that fucking power, not suggests that it should, if it feels it's appropriate. I press open on a drive tray, it better damn open.
    </RANT>

    --

    -William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
  43. Re:HTML isn't ... very good ... for making Web pag by VitaminB52 · · Score: 2, Informative
    There's a big difference between putting a document on screen for someone to read and marking it up for semantic content: there's more cruft in HTML than is required for the former and nothing to assist with the latter.

    Maybe you shouldn't judge HTML for being (un)able to do the things it is nowadays used for, but for it's ability to do the things it was originally designed for.
    If a language fails for a task within it's design limits, then the language (implementation) is bad/broken; if said language fails at a task that's beyond it's design limits, then IMHO the language is OK and you should use another language for the given task.

  44. Wrong premise, wrong answer by Simon+Brooke · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you start by asserting a falsehood as an axiom, any conclusion you reach is going to be wrong. In this case:

    HTML isn't a very good language for making Web pages.

    Sorry, wrong.

    • HTML is a relatively compact, low overhead markup. An HTML page is much more compact than, for example, a PDF or a Word file containing exactly the same data. The consequence of this is it makes good use of low bandwidth links, without needing compression - a benefit I'll return to later.
    • HTML leverages SGML's experience in dealing with multiple character sets, scanning directions, etc; it's therefore effective as a universal markup, not limited to any particular natural language or culture.
    • HTML separates data from presentation, allowing the same content to be made available on a wide range of devices, and to people with a wide range of special needs.
    • HTML is extremely simple to parse; the parser can be extremely lightweight. This in conjunction with the fact that the data representation is compact and doesn't need decompression means that HTML can easily be rendered on extremely low powered devices.
    • HTML's forms extension is admittedly a hack. But it's a successful hack because it's a good hack - it allows system designers to make use of ubiquitous low cost clients. There is a tradeoff between simplicity and functionality and admittedly HTML forms err on the side of simplicity; some more input types would be beneficial. But the XForms proposal is woefully over complex and will fail to be widely deployed for that reason.
    • Finally, HTML is universal and ubiquitous. A huge range of devices out there can accept well formed HTML and render it usefully; there's no need to worry about whether this or that extension or plugin is available on the client.

    In summary, HTML has been so successful largely because it's an extremely good language for writing Web pages. It's become universal and ubiquitous because it's simple, flexible and lightweight. Admittedly HTML is weak in the area of representing special technical formatting such as mathematical formulae; there is a place for such things as MathML et al.

    Yes, there are a huge number of proposals to give us more prolix, more byzantine languages in which to write Web pages. They are going to have to co-exist in a darwinian environment with HTML, and outcompete it. They won't, in my opinion, succeed. In ten, or twenty, years time there will be devices out there which will render formats we haven't yet imagined, and there will be a fragmented web of pages which can only be read on this or that specialised device. But there will still be a web of plain old vanilla flavoured [X]HTML, because that will be the lingua franca that every device can use.

    --
    I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
  45. Validation results: failure by Antiocheian · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Oh. Another article about the future of HTML specifications that fails to validate:

    http://www.htmlhelp.org/cgi-bin/validate.cgi?url=h ttp%3A%2F%2Fwww-128.ibm.com%2Fdeveloperworks%2Flib rary%2Fx-futhtml1%2F%3Fca%3Ddgr-lnxw01FutureHTML&w arnings=yes

    Enough said.

    Don't take this article seriously. Instead of pursuing 3D appliances in web pages your time will much better be invested in playing a 3D game.

  46. Faulty Assumptions by Jerk+City+Troll · · Score: 2, Informative

    One faulty assumption I picked out of that read was the mention of header tags.

    Why, for instance, does HTML have headings H1 through H6? Who ever seriously used a six-level-deep heading hierarchy?

    Well, I have. My company makes a web application where we have some heavily nested data (say, for example, a person nested within another person who is their relative, for any number of levels). Because I try to keep all my mark-up as semantic as possible, I need deeply nested header tags. I can also think of all sorts of technical writing that might use deeper than six levels of section hierarchy.

    It is useless to state assumptions which assume a usage will not be necessary. Instead, make as few assumptions as posisble then handle general case which applies as well to everybody’s typical situation but is easy to extend to edge cases. That’s a basic principle anybody in technology should follow. And, in fact, this is precisely what XHTML 2.0 does. It has a "header" tag which is not indexed and styled by CSS which checks for how many ancestor headers there are.

  47. Re:JavaScript by Malc · · Score: 2, Informative
    There's no reason to lose local context when you do an asynchronous call. JavaScript has closures. The biggest problem with JavaScript is I don't think there is a way to synchronise threads or implement mutexts. Somebody please educate me if this is possible! And BTW, I think I read somewhere that there is a memory leak in IE with closures, but mostly I think they're worthwhile.

    I think that JavaScript/DOM implementations have improved somewhat. Unfortunately we require backwards compatibility at times. There are still some deficiencies - native XPath support to help with XML would be nice.

    I think the following (untested, I made it up right here) should demonstrate maintaining local context. Here we show an alert asynchronously via setTimeout. When the callback occurs, I use both a local variable (obj), and thus the object's member variable (m_str). It looks rather cumbersome, especially with the inner function. But it works. This is what I do with the callback from XMLHTTPRequest objects so that I keep access to my member variables, etc.
    function myClass()
    {
        this.m_str = "poo";
     
        this.doAlert = function doAlert()
        {
            alert(this.m_str);
        }
     
        this.func1 = var function func1()
        {
            var obj = this;
            var fn = function doAlert()
            {
    // Use a local variable from the closure. This
    // restores the this point so that it can be used
    // in the function that we call
                obj.doAlert()
            }
     
            setTime(fn, 10000);
        }
    }
     
    var myObj = new myClass;
    myClass.func1();
  48. Yeah, I've been saying it for months. by Hosiah · · Score: 3, Insightful
    HTML is worse than bad; it needs to be buried. It looks like whoever wrote it must have been swigging absinthe while taking a case-by-case approach and writing *whatever* popped into their mind at the moment. "Um...how to make text bigger? h1,h2,h3,h4,...but we'll use "big" tags here. And change the font size there. And make it so you can also specify size in percent, pixels, *and* points, so no two pages will handle sizing of text the same way. Now, what else can I screw up?"

    CSS, once I learned it (getting the excellent http://www.nvu.com/nvu helped), struck me as the way the web should have been designed to start with. At least all the style twiddling is done in one place. At least I use just *one* command to do one thing. Never mind "50 creative ways to do it."; just give me ONE way: the RIGHT way!

    As for TFA, I love canvas and can't wait to start working with it. It looks like the kind of thing javascript was meant to do 20 years ago when everybody started trying to gangbang it. But javascript itself...I would still like to see java and css integrate themselves closer. In fact (as I've said before in these very hallowed halls) I wish for ONE language that does EVERYTHING with one unified syntax - not using this fourth of a language to write this module, and this tenth of a language to write that section. How about making a *whole* web language that can stand on it's own for a change? Since when is trying to knit five baby languages together to make one little page a good idea, when I only needed one language to write the whole operating system and the web browser on?

    Last but not least, forget the backward compatibility. These days, my philosophy is: "Use the brightest and best technology that pleases me at the time, and if it's not compatible, tell 'em to get a REAL browser." I'm sick and tired of trying to build a page that will accomodate *any* Rube Goldberg contraption that *any* moron whacks together and calls a web browser. Do we make our freeways to accomodate ruk-tuks, Big Wheel tricycles, and pack elephants? Come to that, are the roads in a Tibetan temple designed to accomodate Mac trucks and American Monster SUVs? The time has come to say: "If you insist on traveling the world using only a Conestoga, there are certain places you just won't be able to go. We can't pave the ocean just for you."

    1. Re:Yeah, I've been saying it for months. by BZ · · Score: 2, Informative

      > "Um...how to make text bigger? h1,h2,h3,h4,...
      > but we'll use "big" tags here.

      , etc are not "make text bigger" -- they're "This is a heading". HTML as originally designed didn't have a concept of "make text bigger" at all -- the assumption was that HTML would have logical markup (headings, paragraphs, quotes, etc) and that the renderer would choose the best way to actually present that markup.

      Then browser makers started introducing all sorts of presentational markup ( is an example, as are , etc).

  49. When Money Matters... by Matthendrix · · Score: 4, Funny

    Imagine the big websites in a classroom, and the teacher is CSS...

    Teacher: "Google, you're a naughty boy, stop using tables."
    Google: "But mi-eeessss, i'm reaching so many people and making so much money"
    Teacher: "Doesn't matter, get rid of them, now!"

    Teacher: "Amazon, did I see you with an ImageMap? Yes? Well put that away this instant!"
    Amazon: "But Miss, I too am reaching millions and making that much in cash!"
    Teacher: "Doesn't matter, get rid of it, this instant!"

    Teacher: "And Ebay, I see you're covered yourself in Nested Tables again, clean yourself up, you are a disgrace!"
    Ebay: "But miss, i'm just doing what Amazon is doing. And making lots of cash!"

    Teacher: "When you kids grow up, you'll all thank for me making you act correctly."

    Google, Amazon & Ebay:"Yeah, but we'll be rich and you'll still be playing along like a broken record."



    Epilogue: Miss CSS is now in a 12 step program - CSS Purists Anonymous; where she is recovering from her addiction, one day at a time.

  50. Re:Obvious by juiceCake · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And how intuitive is using a table for layout? Tables are for tabular data. However, many of us are used to using them and going through elaborate methods like using spacer gifs, row spans and column spans, setting alignment here and there, using sliced up graphics (now that's super duper intuitive), etc.

    There are definitely parts of CSS that aren't intuitive, just as with HTML. Both are in evolution, and guess what, the bugs and methods are ironed out.

    Now that I'm used to CSS I'd never go back. I had to make a layout in a table for a lesson deprecated production methods. It was unfathomnably painful, counter-intuitive, limited in options, and clunky.

  51. Re:Format and Content by DannyO152 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Put me firmly in the camp that html is brilliant. It suits exactly its designed purpose: to allow academic papers to be easily shared among colleagues. There are no formatting imperatives in a basic html document, the tagging scheme allows the author to include identifiable hints to be rendered or ignored as the client browser chooses.

    Now what you report your web-designing friend as saying sounds a bit like a jumble of the justification for xml, which is a way to tag informational content so that transformational tools can auto-generate multiple views (including html). Html does not provide this capability, but on the other hand, it does not fuse the presentation and content. The content/presentation divide for a classic html page is very simple: presentation hints are inside the angle brackets and content is outside the tags.

    Now clearly, over the last decade, there have been hack upon hack and new tag upon new tag created, which suggests that there was something "wrong" with the original html. I argue there wasn't. It's just that the web as a commercial medium was not anticipated. So, html was expanded and we've been suffering with the inconsistencies which arose from back-porting robust typography, dynamic control, and other complexities to the original spec. On other hand, plain vanilla html is easily rendered by all browsers and human-comprehensible if a browser isn't available, which is why no one tossed it once the commercial imperatives were recognized. Plus the main reasons why the web did catch fire were: no one owned it, it was open source (source views were there to show how something was done), and html was and is very easy to use.

    Should we discuss how useless a bicycle is because it won't tow a grand piano?

  52. HTML is for markup, not page layout by egarland · · Score: 3, Insightful

    HTML was originally desigend to allow for marking the different types of text as the type they were so the USER could pick how they were displayed. This is a code snippet, this should be fixed width, this is preformated text, etc.

    This delegation of display style was and is a great idea empowering browsers to make things look good and users to pick the fonts they liked the best on "their" machines. It has since been undemined by a flood of additions giving authors the ablity to choose font names for text which most web sites employ (not slashdot though.. thanks guys!) set widths of pages (your new layout sucks arstechnica), pop up new windows without address bars (who was the moron at netscape that decided that was a good idea?) and other fine grained page-layout style things added since.

    HTML was and is an excellent tool for making web sites. It scales all the way from <b>HI</b> to google. It's because it was so very very good at doing what it does that the web is now in the position of global general purpose use and these kids are whining about how hard it is.

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    set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
  53. HTML will be around for a long time by recharged95 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    HTML isn't a very good language for "making Web pages"

    The above notion is inaccurate. HTML was very good in making web pages, especially back in 1995, but the hardware and requirements have evolved, but HTML has not. More accuracy, it should be that HTML isn't a good syntax for making web applications.

  54. Re:Obvious by LordLucless · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I find using a grid-based layout (which is what a table is) fairly intuitive, and I don't really see cell-spanning as a hack. Spacer images and cut-up images are a bit of a hack, but combining tables and CSS, I don't think I've had to cut-up an image for a good few years, and margin/padding settings replace spacers. I quite like CSS in most respects, but I find doing positioning using pure CSS to be a major pain in the backside, especially when trying to maintain browser compaitibility.

    My ideal positioning syntax for CSS would be the ability to setup a grid in any container object (grid-width: 10; grid-height: 10; to setup a 10 by 10 grid) and then be able to specify grid co-ordinates in any objects within that container (position: grid; grid-x: 1; grid-y:1 width: 1cells; height: 10cells;). Bingo, there's a column layout that will resize with it's parent container, with separation of form and content, and semantically valid for all the purists out there (it uses the word "grid" instead of "table").

    I'm not against CSS, I think the concept is great, and the styling part of it works wonderfully. I think the positioning method sucks and should be scrapped, and the alignment method should be fixed - vertical-align working on more objects than just table cells, and being able to center table/fixed-width block elements without resorting to margin hacks.

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    Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face