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Apple, Opera, and Mozilla Push For HTML5
foo fighter writes "The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has been slumbering the past several years: HTML was last updated in 1999, XHTML was last updated in 2002, and no one is taking seriously their largely incompatible work on 'next-generation' XHTML or 'modularized' XHTML. Both HTML and XHTML are in sorry need of removing deprecated items while being updated to reflect the current practices of web and browser developers and remaining compatible with legacy Recommendations. The much more open and transparent WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group), formed in 2004 to address this problem, and has been hard at work on developing a draft spec for HTML5 to update and replace legacy versions of both HTML and XHTML. The quality of this work has reached the point that Apple, Opera, and Mozilla have requested the adoption of HTML5 as the new 'W3C Recommendation' for Web development."
And meanwhile in IE Land, we're still trying to get proper CSS Support. It will always come down to the lowest common denominator, especially when the LCD is the most popular browser. Nobody is going to code HTML 5 pages when the most popular browser doesn't support them. It's great that MS has finally made some headway with IE 7, but if they wait another 5 years until their next major release, then they are going to be even further behind. While all the other browsers are working on CSS3 and HTML5, MS is still working on CSS2 and HTML4.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I started to code my pages in XHTML. But it's just not worth it. Use what works. :)
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I just figured out HTML1 and I am still crying that doesn't work! :~(
What we need is an updated version of CSS that lets you do things like reference other elements attributes so that you can create tables and line up things across/down the page. The ability to put different images on the left and right hand sides and top and bottom and all variants off would be great for putting rounded corners on things etc... instead of having to do hacks link putting in extra p tags just for the image.
HTML is more or less fine, give me a better version of CSS anyday.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
No, the W3C have been very busy.
No, XHTML was last updated two months ago.
Everybody is ignoring XHTML 2.0 because it isn't finished yet. XHTML 1.1 is not an option for most developers for one reason in particular: you can't use it with Internet Explorer. Blame Microsoft.
No, both HTML 4.01 Strict and XHTML 1.0 Strict are available for those people who wish to use a document type that doesn't include the deprecated stuff. And even if they weren't available, nobody needs deprecated items to be removed. If you don't want them, don't use them. Just because they appear in a specification it doesn't mean you are forced to use them.
No, they are requesting that the W3C — the organisation you've just written off as closed and useless — adopt their work as a starting point, so that it can be developed further at the W3C. They aren't asking that the W3C give it Recommendation status, they are asking the W3C to take over its development.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
The article misses a pretty large point: the w3 has already decided to work on the next version of HTML. The post linked to is a recommendation that the HTML 5 spec be used as a starting point for that work.
I hate to break it to you, but that's not HTML 4.01 Transitional either. No version of HTML has permitted overlapping elements in the way that you describe. You are merely exploiting error handling that is fairly common amongst web browsers.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Yes, this incessant pushing of the technology/standards envelope is creating a lot of disjoint, stilted, and otherwise unreadable web sites. It used to be web pages were mainly HTML with a few SSI thrown in for good measure; now they are over-burdened with flashy graphics, tricky menus (god how rollovers are getting out of hand!), and a lack of decent content. I mean, I go to a web site to find information I'm looking for. In the old days, you could do that -- now content is so snarled in meaningless fluff that have the time I have to search the source code just to find what I'm looking for.
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Hi there. I'm a web developer/designer. I do flash, too. Good times, right?
I design and build to the XHTML 1.0 transitional standard, and for some bizarre reason one of my clients still makes me test their pages in IE5. When was the last time you even saw a computer that had IE5 on it?
Your objections to design I can't really comment on beyond saying I hope you're not referring to any of mine. But your objection to HTML/CSS doing what javascript used to be necessary for? Really? You prefer writing little-stupid javascript functions to just putting a :hover rule in your CSS? Really?
You, sir, are a rare breed. Hats off to you though; HTML 3.2 is really the only standard the most browsers agree upon (IE6/7 have all those weird box model problems with XHTML 1.0).
...
Don't even get me started on people whose home page is some massive flash object. Sure, some people use poor designs which drain resources unnecesarily, I don't think that's necessarily an issue of new standards or technologies being poor though, just that the flexibility we demand from our new web technologies inevitably allows for misuse. You can't blame Javascript, XHTML, or even Flash simply because some people will misuse it any more than you can blame HTML 3.2 because someone decides to use 24 levels of <table><tr><td> tags to make their layout the way they want. As far as crashing goes, that's a software issue and nothing more.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
They can have my blink tag when they pry it from my cold, dead hands!
New punctuation update "~" (no quotes) at the end of a line to indicate sarcasm. ~
Funny, that's how I feel about people who don't use CSS. Seriously, if you are that concerned with the size of pages and bandwidth, like you say in your other comment, then why are you transmitting your style information on every single page load?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
"Fact is if MSFT doesn't make the "standard" MSFT won't support it properly."
that's exactly why they should be in the standard creation team.
Tim Berners-Lee, bless him, didn't seem to understand that anyone would ever want a web page with more than one column. So some genius (a name I've forgotten) thought of using tables for layout, and many problems were solved: multi-column layouts with headers and footers which stretched to accomodate content and rendered the same way (more or less) across all browsers and platforms. Hooray!
Then came CSS: coding could be much cleaner and more flexible, but tables-for-layout was considered bad, and we began wrestling with creating layouts using divs and clears and floats, having to use such kludges as negative margins in order to replicate table-like behavior. It can be done, but it's harder. So for HTML5, how about setting aside creating new but not-very-helpful features like "overline" (who uses that?) and coming up with things that actually help us create web pages? Why not create a tag called "grid" that acts like a table, but is designed for page layout? Most graphic designers use grids, and it would really help web design as a whole if something like that existed for us.
How about a way of having content reflow from one column to another when a window is resized? Page layout programs have done this for 20+ years, so shouldn't it be possible for a web page and a browser today?
So please, HTML5 people, don't just talk to computer scientists and advocates for the disabled when creating this new specification. Think of the people who actually have to lay out pages!
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
I don't really get your complaint. I mean, I share your annoyance with uselessly flashy pages, and literally Flash-y pages, but what's wrong with refining standards? Many of the updates to HTML have made things cleaner, more precise, and more consistent. Some of the added features have allowed web developers to do more with less code (if you can call HTML "code"). Much of what's added in-- if you don't want to use it, don't use it. But if you have some reason to do something flashy on your site, it's probably better to have it be done in some standard way rather than though some hack or by adding Flash to your page.
I get the impression he's not a professional web designer, so he can just ignore stuff like that entirely.
There's a very good reason for that. The W3C were working on HTML 3 when it became apparent that their work was diverging from what browsers understood; browser vendors were adding stuff at a crazy rate while ignoring the HTML 3 work. So the W3C decided to scrap HTML 3 and make a decent description of what browsers understood in HTML 3.2.
Basically, the reason why "most browsers agree upon HTML 3.2" is because HTML 3.2 was merely rubber-stamping what browsers already did.
There's no such thing as a "box model" in XHTML 1.0. The box model is a feature of CSS.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Funny, that's how I feel about people who don't use CSS. Seriously, if you are that concerned with the size of pages and bandwidth, like you say in your other comment, then why are you transmitting your style information on every single page load?
Agreed.
To the GP: I recently redesigned my main website after running it for five years with a design very much like the one you describe - all coded by hand, HTML 3.2, no CSS (although I had some equally old Javascript for highlighting the navigation buttons).
The new version uses CSS, and since I designed it using the "strict" mode of newfangled HTML, it renders more or less identically on different browsers. I also built a batch build content management system, so that I don't have to manually edit a bunch of HTML when I change the design or whatever. I made sure the output is basically what I would have done if I did it all by hand though.
I was very skeptical about it before I started, but it really is a much better way to build websites. It saves time, it makes redesigns and multi-platform stuff easier (like theoretically I could swap out CSS files to make a version formatted for PDAs if I were running a website that would be at all useful on them), and it's *much* easier to get relatively consistent rendering across platforms. The only visible difference I'm aware of between Firefox and IE6/7 is related to tables without a fixed width. Neither one looks superior, they're just different.
"...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
I've tried, I really have, to embrace the Zen garden Juu-Juu of CSS, can you make a simple blog page work in CSS? sure! Can you make an massive website with many different templates and variable width data-areas work in CSS? Yea, if you're a complete lunatic. but you have to get there with hack over hack over hack over hack. Here is the deep dark secret of CSS, it's not designed for layout. It's fantastic for styling, but try doing a Box-model or Float layout and you quickly realizing you're asking CSS to do things it wasn't intended to do, and it simply does not break gracefully the way a simple table layout does (You know floats were originally intended for pictures, not layout areas). So while I respect the purity of a CSS for style, HTML for content concept, in practice CSS is just as much of a kludge as Table design. I've saved hours of time and reached wider audiences of compatibility by going for a hybrid design, but this breaks the "standards".
IMO, standards should follow simple elegant solutions, a hundred lines of CSS browser compatibility code and float hacks is far from an elegant solution. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE give designers a proper layout language!!
When was the last time you even saw a computer that had IE5 on it?
So, I've got a client that runs an e-commerce site. At least a couple hundred orders per day. I did a quick dig into today's stats. So far: 4 orders from people running IE5, and one from a Netscape 4 flavor. All appeared to be on dial-up connections. A little over $1600 worth of business in those 5 orders. These are orders for non-essential items, which suggests disposable income that COULD go into a computer upgrades, broad-band connections, etc. for those shoppers, but which have not. I absolutely guarantee that my client would rather have today's business from those 5 customers than have whatever liberty may come from being able to leverage current formatting fanciness/compatibility. Their site renders just fine in every browser to date, and that $1600 is in the bank, instead of that of a CSS-ed-to-the-hilt, hipper-than-thou competitor. Someday the numbers of legacy users will drop low enough to warrant the change, but $1600 before lunchtime says today's not the day.
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You are very correct. CSS gets much more hacky than "legacy" layout if you try to do any significant layout with it.
I tried to make a simple 3 column table with CSS only. After struggling with that for an hour, I said fuck it, and put an old style table in there. It was much easier.
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With CSS, it can be both. The "C" in "CSS" stands for "Cascading". The style rules suggested by a web designer cascade together with style rules preferred by the user.
As for why it's a good idea for web designers to have this feature, well it's for the same reason any styling is useful for the web designer to have. Because although the user should have the final say (which CSS allows), it's difficult to predict exactly which presentation is most suitable for all the pages you are likely to encounter in the future. The web designer that produced the page, on the other hand, knows the context in which the information is being related and has a good chance of being able to come up with a more appropriate presentation than something that is generic to all pages.
Well if that's what you want, then pages being "marked up as generally as possible" is exactly the opposite of what you want. If you are relying on the browser to handle all presentation, then what you need is specific, accurate markup, not general stuff.
In any case, the two goals are not mutually exclusive, and CSS has been handling this for over a decade. For those users who like to be in control, they can configure their browsers to ignore author-supplied stylesheets. Everybody else can take what is suggested by the web designer, or configure their browser to make only minimal changes (e.g. font size).
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
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Torben