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HTML V5 and XHTML V2
An anonymous reader writes "While the intention of both HTML V5 and XHTML V2 is to improve on the existing versions, the approaches chosen by the developers to make those improvements are very different. With differing philosophies come distinct results. For the first time in many years, the direction of upcoming browser versions is uncertain. This article uncovers the bigger picture behind the details of these two standards."
Why not just simplify your entire comment:
Content from a 3rd party runs in a more restrictive context than the primary site (this includes frames etc).
You are then not held at the whim of a web admin to ensure these tags are included.
Or you could just use the noscript addin right now and choose which sites you trust at your discretion.
liqbase
All the browser vendors have already said they will support HTML 5 (yes, that includes MS) and all but MS have said they won't support XHTML 2 (MS hasn't made much of an effort to suggest they will support it either).
As it stands, with both XHTML 5 and XHTML 2 using the same namespace, it is only possible to support one of the two.
This also seems to be the case when ever somebody bitches about web designers changing fonts, using javascript, or doing something to make their page look nice. You visit the websites created by the "changing the font at all, even in the stylesheet, is evil" or the classic "why are you trying to use two columns? two columns are evil" religious zealots and all their pages look really dull and boring. Long streams of times new roman. I guess this is our future, eh?
am I the only developer thats sick of this html / css / javascript mess??
people/companies are trying to develop rich applications using decade old markup language thats improperly supported by different browsers (even firefox doesn't fully support css yet) and is a very ugly mix right now, its like squeezing a rectangular plasticine object thru a round,triangular and starshaped holes at the same time
the web needs a reboot
we need a programming language that:
*works on the server and the client
*something that makes making UIs as easy as drag and drop
*something that does not forgive idiot html "programmers" who write bad code
*something that doesnt suffer from XSS
*something that can be extended easily
*something that can be "compiled" for faster execution
*something thats implemented same way in all browsers (or even better doesnt require a browsers and works on range of platforms)
Most of the web is non well-formed, so it's variations of HTML 4 with non-standard components. An HTML 5, that remains a non-XML language, presents a reasonable way forward for "web sites." Without the need to be well-formed, the tools to create are easier and can be sloppy, particularly for moderately admined sites. Creating a new HTML 5 might succeed in migrating those sites. If you avoid most breaks with HTML 4, beyond the worst offenders, Browsers could target an HTML 5, and webmasters would only need to change 5%-10% of the content to keep up. That would mean a less degrading "legacy" mode than the HTML 4 renderers we have now.
So while the HTML 4 renderers floating around wouldn't be trashed, they could be ignored, left as is, and focus on an HTML 5 one. Migrating to XHTML is non-trivial for people with out-dated tools and lack of knowledge. You can't ignore those sites as a browser maker, but HTML 5 might give a reasonable path to modernizing the "non-professional" WWW.
XHTML has some great features, by being well-formed XML, you can use XML libraries for parsing the pages. This makes it much easier to "scrape" data off pages and handle inter-system communication, which HTML is not equipped for.
It's interesting in that HTML and XHTML look almost identical (for good reasons, XHTML was a port of HTML to XML) but are technically very different, HTML being an SGML language, and XHTML an XML language. Both programs have their uses, HTML is "easier" for people to hack together because if you do it wrong, the HTML renderer makes a best guess. XHTML is easier to use professionally, because if there is a problem, you can catch it as being an invalid XML document. Professionals worry about cross-browser issues, amateurs worry about getting it out there.
XHTML "failed" to replace HTML because it satisfies the needs of professionals to have a standardized approach to minimize cross-browser issues, but lacks the simplicity needed for amateurs and lousy professionals.
Rev'ing both specs would be a forward move that might simplify browser writing in the long term while giving a migration path. XHTML needs a less confusing and forward looking path, and HTML needs to be Rev'd after being left for dead to drop the really problematic entries and give people a path forward.
Could you not get around that by injecting code like:
</restriction> <!-- closes the existing restriction zone. Might not pass as valid XML, but HTML browsers work with tag soup. -->
Something evil!!!
<restriction lock="I don't really care here" except="everything"> <!-- This bit is purely optional -->
Obviously I need to work on something more destructive than "Something evil!!!" before I attempt to conquer the planet...
Can't do that. That's because often the website you visit is the one sending the 3rd party data.
Think webmail (yahoo, gmail etc), when you receive spam, your webmail provider is the one sending you the data.
Usually they will try to filter the content to make it safe. BUT as history shows it's not always 100%.
The W3C or browser maker might also make a new tag/feature that your filtering libraries aren't aware of (e.g. old sites with guestbooks that might not filter out the "latest and greatest stuff").
With my proposal, users can enable javascript+flash for stuff like youtube, and youtube can be more certain that the comments about the video will be treated as plain html by browsers that support the security tag. Stuff that slips through the filters would likely still be rendered inactive by those browsers.
Why would your site let through new tags that it doesn't recognise? Use a whitelist.
This only usually occurs if you let through malformed HTML. Use tidy or similar to ensure you only emit valid HTML. Not to mention the fact that the whole problem is caused by lax parsing — something the W3C has been trying to get people to give up on with the parsing requirements for XML.
You could define such a subset using the modularised XHTML 1.1 or your own DTD.
Yes, but it won't be actually used that way. If browsers went to the trouble of actually implementing this extra layer of redundancy, all the people with lax security measures would simply use that as an alternative and all the people who take security seriously will use it, despite it not being necessary. I think the cumulative effect would be to make the web less secure.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I don't think I've ever seen anybody say this. Example?
In actual fact, their pages don't look boring at all. Your default browser setup looks boring.
Remember, a web design doesn't look like anything until it is realised with the combination of hardware, browser defaults and personal settings. If you think a site that uses your preferences looks boring, then your preferences are to blame.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
No because the closing tag has to have a lock string that matches the lock on the opening tag.
:).
My attempts to change the world (albeit by a little bit) aren't going very well either - it's been more than 5 years since I first proposed the tags, but so far the W3C and Mozilla bunch have preferred to make other "more fun" stuff instead...
Maybe Microsoft has subverted the W3C too
This is a novel technique (the unique, hard to guess string, which easily could be a hash of the document and a secret salt the website has) I have not seen before, but this merely punts the issue to the browsers. It cannot be solved there (as you mention); in fact, it does not even begin to solve it: think about the legacy browsers floating around the web. I don't even trust browser vendors to lock down all of this code: they also have their own security bugs.
:-)
There is also the minor point that your method is almost completely incompatible with DOM, but I'll overlook that for now.
you ever use anything with ajax? i.e. u like google maps? u can thank MS for bringing that out of javascript...
ms ain't the devil for development, sometimes they drive new features and functionality that would take forever to incorporate otherwise. do they always do it in the best of ways, no, but they do bring out good things from time to time...
The worst thing about W3C standards is the lack of a reference implementation. If you can't produce a computer program that implements 100% of the specification you are writing in a reasonable timeframe, your standard is too complex.
Is doesnt matter if the reference standard is slow-as-molasses or requires vast quantities of memory, at least you have proven the standard is actually realistically implementable. On the other hand if your reference implementation was easy to build and is really good, then that will foster code re-use and massively jump-start the availability of standardised implementations from multiple vendors. It might also show that you have a really good standard there.
If you don't do this, you get stuff like SVG - I don't think there is even one single 100% compliant SVG implementation anywhere, and there may never be.
There aren't any fully compliant CSS, or HTML implementations either, to my knowledge.
The same goes for XHTML and HTML5. If you, as a standards organisation, are not in a position to directly provide, or sponsor the development of an open reference implementation, then personally, I think you should be restricting your standard to a smaller chunk of functionality that you are actually able to do this with.
There is no reason a composite standard, with a bunch of smaller, well defined components, each with reference implementations, can't be used to specify 'umbrella' standards.
Now, i am also aware that building a reference application tends to make the standard as written overly influenced by shortcomings in the reference implementation, but i really can't believe this would be worse that the debacle surrounding WWW standards we've had for the last 10+ years. Without a conformant reference implementation, HTML support in browsers is dictated by the way Internet Explorer and Netscape did things anyway.
I'm also aware that smaller standards tends to promote a rather piecemeal evolution of those standards, when what is often desired is an 'across the board' update of technology.
But this 'lets define monster standards that will not be fully implemented for years, if at all, and hope for the best' approach seems to be obviously bad, allowing larger vendors to first play a large role in authoring a 'standard' that is practically impossible to fully implement, and then to push their own hopelessly deficient versions of these 'standards' on the world and sit back and laugh because there is no way to 'do better' by producing a 100% compliant version.
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
Ajax-like techniques are possible without XMLHttpRequest and I don't believe Google Maps uses XMLHttpRequest anyway. If any organisation is responsible for the popularity of Ajax, it's Google, as it was when they started using it extensively that it really took off.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Please re-read the original comment. It was saying that you can use JavaScript without being backwards-incompatible. You seem to have confused this with avoiding JavaScript altogether. Every single point you make is good against an argument that JavaScript should be avoided, but completely irrelevant to somebody asking for it to degrade gracefully, which is the distinction BlueParrot was trying to explain to you.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
The current situation is awful.
You want easy? SQL injections are easy to handle. Just use a parameterized query so you don't have to mix tainted data with your trusted SQL.
Back in the stone age before php thought parameterized queries were more then enterprise fluffery, you were forced to mix your user data with your SQL. And oh were the results hilarious! It look three tries (and three fucking functions) for PHP/mysql to get their escape code right and I'm sure you can still inject SQL with "mysql_real_escape_string()" in some new unthought of way.
There is no "parameterized query" with HTML. You are *forced* to mix hostile user data with your trusted HTML. If it was that hard to sanitize an "easy" language like SQL, how hard is it to sanitize a very expressive language like HTML?
You are telling me all those CPAN modules handle the hundreds of ways you can inject HTML into the dozens of different browsers? How many ways can you make an angle bracket and have it interpreted as a legit browser tag? How many ways can you inject something to the end of a URL to close the double quote and inject your javascript? How many ways, including unicode, can you make a double quote? Dont forget, your implementation cannot strip out the Unicode like I've seen some filters do - I need the thing to handle every language! I would guess there are thousands of known ways to inject junk into your trusted HTML.
I promise you that even the best CPAN module is still exploitable in some way not considered by the author. And I'd be insane to roll my own, as I'm not as smart as she is.
Don't kid yourself and thinking filtering user generated content is easy. It is very, *very* hard.
Sweet.. So we agree and I owe you some kind of beer. Slashdot makes everybody a flamer :-)
There is a very strong business case for good degradation too... Last I checked, Google doesn't interpret your javascript. You want good SEO, you better make sure the content flows right in lynx (which is the best way to think about how google sees the page).
Sadly, screen readers are pretty much like google too, but I really think we aren't feeding screen readers enough information for them to properly read a page. I really dont know the answer to screen readers. I've never played much with it, but in the windows world, if you were doing a winforms app you can sprinkle your form with metadata to help screen readers. But again, even the winforms solution is a bit like an alt tag.
When I took a usability class, we watched some video I wish I could find of somebody using a screen reader. Talk about intense. Imagine reading a web page, or any document for that matter, while looking through a straw that is only one word wide. That is about what it is like. Now read it with the voice cranked to "hyper fast talk mode" and that is how the blind experience the web. Very interesting and eye opening.
Whatever the future holds (silverlight/flex), we need to make sure the standard has some good, juicy metadata to help out screen readers (and google, really).
Where was I now?
I think the problem is that (x)html is trying to be two very different things. It is trying to be a universal document format for presenting information. It is also trying to be a universal presentation manager for thin client applications. The technical requirements for these are very different, and it may well be that two different standards are appropriate.
I believe what you are referring to is the "Hidden iframe" technique. Google lists plenty of resources on using this technique.
<restricton lock="Random_hard_to_guess_string" except="java,safe-html" />
Doesn't really matter how "hard to guess" your string is if you're going to transmit it cleartext in the body of your HTML document, does it?
"But wait!" you say, "We can randomize the string every time the document is served, thus defeating anything but an embedded Javascript with access to the DOM." Perhaps so, but now you're talking about server-side behavior — something clearly beyond the purview of the HTML specification.
If you think about it clearly, there's only one place that it makes any sense to address hostile embedded content, and it is server-side, with the growing battery of techniques already in service. Insisting that the HTML spec and browsers should be addressing this issue is assinine.
SIERRA TANGO FOXTROT UNIFORM
bah! see? slashdot's filter system just fucked me over too and I swear I previewed to see if it kept all my paragraphs.
:-)
It ain't easy as you say bro...
I did. I still do: most images add nothing to the content, they merely add dancing bears to the web content, pull more bandwidth, provide client tracking through the tracking of third-party 1-pixel GIF's, and generally slow down my web performance. They also interfere extensively with text->speech synthesis for the visually impaired.
The Web is not for the developers. It's for the people who want and need the data, the clients who in the end actually pay the bills and view the pages. If it's a games site for people to play Flash games, great: othewise, get out of the dancing bears business and let me look up what I need.
I thank the HTML 5 guys for their attempts, but I prefer XHTML v2
From TFA:
XHTML V2 isn't aimed at average HTML authorsXHTML is for intelligent human beings, you know, people who can actually understand what separation of concerns is.
[HTML v5] propose features that might simplify the lives of average Web developersSo HTML v5 is for people who don't understand separation of concerns.
Unfortunstely that's the 99% of web kiddies out there.
The standards will appeal to different audiences.One standard for smart people who know programming and actually work with an engineering mindset, another for those who see the web as a big graffiti and work with an "anything goes" mindset. No thanks, I prefer ONE standard for smart people, XHTML v2, and just to kick out everyone who isn't qualified.
Why go through all the hassle of "random hard to guess string" which, if implemented improperly could be guessed? Plus, as others have pointed out, HTML is not a dynamic language. Your random, hard to guess string could be observed and used by an attacker.
...be a whole lot simpler? Just instruct the browser to make an additional request, but one in which it's expected to fully sandbox the content according to rules that you give it. This makes it much harder for application developers to screw up and a lot harder for malicious code to bypass the sandboxing mechanism.
Wouldn't something like:
<sandbox src="restrictedContent.html" allow="html,css" deny="javascript,cookies"/>
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
What the web is crying out for is a standard that supports a rich data hierarchy, a rich presentation hierarchy, and a databinding mechanism to connect these two (preferably without using CSS, but that's another debate).
That's exactly where the next-gen UI frameworks have gone (Flex from Adobe, XAML from Microsoft). These frameworks represent the wave of the future and that's where the web needs to go too.
Meanwhile, the web standards community spouts all this rhetoric of "separating presentation and semantics" in HTML/CSS, which is nonsense. Both HTML and CSS are precisely concerned with presentation. And they are not at all separate. You need to know and love both to coax good looking pages out of a browser. All this huffing and puffing, yet the best they can offer for application-specific data models is microformats!
As far as I can tell, both HTML 5 and XHTML 2 are icing on the cake, and missing the main course altogether.
The beauty of the web was that anyone could put up a web page.
All you "standards nazis" out there, please don't forget that. The web is for everyone, yes, even those who can't write HTML "properly".
Hopefully browsers will always render badly formed HTML, otherwise the web will be a poorer place for it.
Use Tidy, and suddenly you've got perfectly fine XHTML again.
You don't have to write one yourself, because W3C provides a perfectly good one, and there already is a large number of open source clones of Tidy. Writing it yourself would be stupid and prone to error. The existing ones are as good as "guess what you mean" can getm and that is an improvement, because you're not trusting wacky, unreliable browsers to turn the crap on your site into something valid, you're doing it yourself. You are in control! That is always an improvement.
PS: My Slashdot comments are perfectly valid XHTML snippets. (Not valid XML, because they don't have a root element. I'm trusting the Slashdot server to handle that for me.)