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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."
Both standards are being worked on the by the W3C standards group. Microsoft, along with all other major browser developers, is a member.
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You have to hand it to the W3C, they keep supplying web designers with rope.
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I've been trying to get them (and browser people) to include a security oriented tag to disable unwanted features.
Why such tags are needed:
Say you run a site (webmail, myspace (remember the worm?), bbs etc) that is displaying content from 3rd parties (adverts, spammers, attackers) to unknown browsers (with different parsing bugs/behaviour).
With such tags you can give hints to the browsers to disable unwanted stuff between the tags, so that even if your site's filtering is insufficient (doesn't account for a problem in a new tag, or the browser interprets things differently/incorrectly), a browser that supports the tag will know that stuff is disabled, and thus the exploit fails.
I'm suggesting something like:
<restricton lock="Random_hard_to_guess_string" except="java,safe-html"
browser ignores features except for java and safe-html.
unsafe content here, but rendered safely by browser
<restrictoff lock="wrong_string"
more unsafe content here but still rendered safely by browser
<restrictoff lock="Random_hard_to_guess_string"
all features re-enabled
safe-html = a subset of html that we can be confident that popular browsers can render without being exploited e.g. <em>, <p>).
It doesn't have to be exactly as I suggest - my main point is HTML needs more "stop/brake" tags, and not just "turn/go faster" tags.
Before anyone brings it up, YES we must still attempt to filter stuff out (use libraries etc), the proposed tags are to be a safety net. Defense in depth.
With this sort of tag a site can allow javascript etc for content directly produced by the site, whilst being more certain of disabling undesirable stuff on 3rd party content that's displayed together (webmail, comments, malware from exploited advert/partner sites).
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?
HTML 5 is aiming to support various things needed for web applications (in fact, the current draft is formed of two documents: Web Applications 1.0 and Web Forms 2.0). Also, see http://www.w3.org/2006/appformats/admin/charter.html.
Why not just go with XHTML all the way? I always though that the best way of "fixing" all the broken and horribly written HTML out there on the web would be to build a proxy that could translate from broken HTML to nicely formed XHTML and then send that to the browser, cleaning up this whole double rendering paths in the browsers (unless I missunderstood something) etc. XHTML really could be enough for everyone, and having two standards instead of one certainly isn't working in anyones favor.
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.
Both standards are being worked on the by the W3C standards group.
According to the IBM paper html 5 is being done independently of the W3C. "In April 2007, the W3C voted on a proposal to adopt HTML V5 for review" is about as much as W3C has with html 5.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Anyone thinking of clicking on the parent's link (to vumit.com) should realize that it's a goatsex-style shocker page.
Find free books.
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
The author apparently has no experience with rendering XHTML on mobile devices. First of all, since the screen is smaller, it's not just about restyling things in a minimalist theme. It's about prioritizing information and remove the unnecessary one so more important information becomes more accessible in limited display real-estate.
For example, anyone who accessed Slashdot homepage on their mobile phone knows the pain of having the scroll down past the left and right columns before reaching the stories. You can simulate this experience by turning off page style and narrowing your browser window to 480 pixels wide. The story summaries are less accessible because they're further down a very long narrow page.
Another problem is the memory. Even if you style the unnecessary page elements to "no display", they're still downloaded and parsed by the mobile browser as part of the page. Mobile devices have limited memory, and I get "out of memory" error on some sites. For reading long articles on mobile devices, it is better to break content into more pages than you would on a desktop display, both for presentation and memory footprint reasons.
For these two reasons, a site designer generally has to design a new layout for each type of device. The dream of "one page (and several style sheets) to rule them all" is a fairytale.
I once had a signature.
The current situation is awful.
That's one of them, yes. It really depends on what you want to do; for example you don't need anything other than typical mousedown event handlers for things like Google Maps, and you can use things like dynamically generated image URIs to send data back to the server asynchronously, which is compatible all the way back to Netscape 2. There are lots of options, the value in XMLHttpRequest is more convenience than functionality.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Err, yes it does. From the Google Maps API reference:
And that's just a recent refinement. Google Maps has used the XMLHttpRequest object for ages. Yes, it's possible to get a similar effect using hidden iframes and such, but doing it that way is really awkward. They'd have to be crazy to pass that amount of data back and forth that way when they've got XMLHttpRequest.
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.