Slashdot Mirror
Is It Time for a 'Kinder, Gentler HTML'?
jg21 writes "Via the Web 2.0 Journal, a worthy link to Yahoo! Architect and JSON inventor Douglas Crockford's latest ideas to fix HTML. He's categorically not a fan of HTML 5, which is still just an Editor's Draft and not endorsed by W3C yet. Crock puts forward ten ideas that in his view would provide extensibility without complexity, adding that the simplification of HTML he is proposing would reduce the cost of training of web developers and incorporates the best practices of AJAX development. From the article: 'The problems with HTML will not be solved by making it bigger and more complicated. I think instead we should generalize what it does well, while excising features that are problematic. HTML can be made into a general application delivery format without disrupting its original role as a document format.'"
Too many people have put too much crap into HTML. Too many people have a stake in each useless tag.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
On the one hand, people tout the web as a great platform for communicating ideas, from anyone to anyone. On the other hand, people keep saying that html needs to be standards compliant, the browsers need to fit the standard and that it should be exact and break catastrophically at a mistake. Sorry, but you can only have one of those things. If a page has a major breakdown because a closing tag is missing, then someone like my mother would just give up trying. Internet Explorer, for all its problems, was very good at error forgiveness, and it opened up the platform for a lot of people. If you want the internet to be an open place where anyone can put information, then it needs to be forgiving of people who aren't web developers and programmers. Otherwise, it's only a medium for programmers to communicate, and it loses a lot of its value.