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HTML to be 'Incrementally Evolved'
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Sat Oct 28, 2006 10:41 AM
from the new-and-improved dept.
from the new-and-improved dept.
MrDrBob writes "It has been decided that HTML is going to be incrementally updated, as the W3C believe that their efforts with XHTML are going unnoticed or unused by many websites out there. HTML is going to be worked on in parallel with XHTML (but with no dependencies), with the W3C trying to evolve HTML to a point where it's easier and logical for everybody to transition to XHTML. However, their work is still going to attempt to improve HTML in itself, with work on forms moving towards transitioning into XForms, but bearing in mind the work done by Webforms. In addition, the W3C's HTML validator is going to get improved, with Tim Berners-Lee wanting it to 'check (even) more stuff, be (even) more helpful, and prioritize carefully its errors, warning and mild chidings'. This looks like a nice step forward for the W3C, and will hopefully leave all the squabbling and procrastination behind."
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Please upgrade BLINK (Score:5, Funny)
Example of server side blink [blartwendo.com]
Wonderful!?
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Or maybe we should have blinking characters added to Unicode?
I'm sure these would be nice innovations that Microsoft could include in post-Vista Windows versions.
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This seems to go back all the way to the days when Netscape "incrementally evolved" HTML too, and frustrated developers commented that its next set of new HTML tags would probably be peek and poke.
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More focus on standard the most will ignore. (Score:3, Insightful)
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No, no, and still no. It is a specific application of XML.
A Waste of Time (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A Waste of Time (Score:4, Insightful)
There are plenty of other things the W3C could work on. How about they spend some time extending 'forms' (which are essentially just embedded controls) to incorporate more complex widgets like embedded video viewers or audio players? I'm sick of being a Linux user and hitting pages that use some strange flash/activex player system or something thats sized in a pop up explicitly for Windows Media Player's browser plug in.
They wouldn't actually have to produce anything using native widgets, just a set of standards regarding embedded video player sizes (and perhaps basic layout formats) that implementors could follow, and suggest a standard for styling this via CSS and controlling it via javascript.
The web is more than just hypertext now, people expect media, but as it stands theres a dozen different ways to embed things like video it into a web page unlike images and the old faithful <img> tag. I say if it can work for images it can work for video and sound, and even flash and we can do away with alot of this activex and netscape embedded junk.
Back on getting people to move to XHTML, I blame schools, the various courses i've been on that mention HTML still talk of it as a series of tag's in vaguely the right order rather than explaining the concept of XML, nesting or CSS.
Parent
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Yeah! People who write well formed, easy to parse XHTML documents when they don't necessarily have to are just sheep following a fad.
You know another group of people that annoy me? People who write properly indented, well documented ANSI C when everyone knows that gcc doesn't require it. Morons. I wish more people would only do the bare minimum required to compile/render their work.
-matthew
Looking forward to more crashing browsers (Score:2)
Advantages? (Score:2)
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With it being XML, it's easier to read with other tools - using an XML library makes it trivially easy to write code to turn an XHTML web-page into a highly structured, tree-like associative array which contains everything the original page contains.
In layman-speak - instead of mashing through the 'view source' equivalent (one big string), it becomes a mightily detailed tree, wit
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XHTML is VERY strict. That makes it very easy to parse. But that same facet makes it very tough to write by hand. What I mean is that with HTML you've got all your tags, but many people don't write them correctly. How often do you write a closing P tag? Do you close your IMG tags like you should (<IMG SRC=... />)? Most people don't. If you did that in XHTML, you're page would be wrong and if the browser is in strict mode, things die with an error. Improper nesting can also cause this (<P>Some
Re:Advantages? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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The disadvantage of XHTML is that it's harder to write initially and has stricter rules. Most people write broken HTML 4 transitional pages that, quite honestly, work fine for their audience (web only).
Parsing HTML is a bitch, working with it is, quite simply difficult. Additionally XHTML su
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One of the advantages is that you could use XSLT to convert an XHTML document in something else (like LaTeX, RTF, ...).
XSLT is possibly the most horrible language to use for transforming documents. Languages such as CDuce [cduce.org] are years ahead.
Rich.
The problem with XHTML... (Score:2)
This "feature" makes it unsuitable for sites that allow users to add content.
Re:The problem with XHTML... (Score:4, Insightful)
Then make sure that the content added by the user is well-formed before adding it to the site.
Parent
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Please, by all means write a forum BBCode parser that outputs valid XHTML that works under the application/xml+html mime-type.
It's easier said than done, as you have to track every open and close tag and rewrite them if the user gets them in the wrong order or omits one.
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Please, by all means write a forum BBCode parser that outputs valid XHTML that works under the application/xml+html mime-type.
The wiki I wrote [merjis.com] does something analogous to that. (Not BBcode, but MediaWiki-ish markup which is similar). It's not really so hard for a competent programmer.
Rich.
I don't get this at all (Score:2)
Coalition of the Working (Score:2)
UA makers should be able to submit to the W3C new proposed specs with both reference code and validator.
HTML versions should be date/timestamped, and validated between UA and server.
That kind of open, but moderated and encapsulated process will help ensure new specs are not only workable, but distributed to all UA makers (and programme
HTML vs XHTML (Score:3, Insightful)
XHTML for all practical purposes, is HTML but with more errors. With XHTML, you get the power of being told that you have to put an end tag on all
tags. And, umm, not a lot else. The benefits of switching to XHTML are mostly theoretical.
The W3C needs to break the focus on validation, and get back to trying to work with developers and users to get what THEY want into specifications. It sounds like they realized that XHTML will not overtake HTML any time soon, and that they need to provide some sort of reason or reasons to make that change.
becasue we dont care (Score:4, Insightful)
Very Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as the benefits are just hypothetical (with XHTML somebody could develop useful parsing applications based on commodity XML parsers), try actually developing some such apps that generate real, observable value today, and you'll start convincing people who don't care about standards for their own sake.
I do generally try to stick to XHTML 1.0, since I care about standards and ease of parsing, but the majority of people don't, and they are the target audience the W3C needs to work on convincing.
HTML is dead, but no one noticed (Score:5, Insightful)
HTML is dead. It's been superceded by XHTML for years now.
HTML was a good idea with some rough edges. It took XHTML to smooth some of them out. Specs that are less vague, more complete, and leave less to interpretation will fix more problems in the future.
XHTML is simpler than HTML (contrary to popular belief) because the syntax and structure is more consistent than HTML. You don't have to wonder whether you need a closing a tag: all tags get closed. All attributes get quoted. All tag names and attributes are lower case. It's really not that hard; if you don't want to do it because you can't read it anymore (you capitalization whore), that's what syntax highlighting is for. You just have to put forth a tiny bit of effort to make turn these rules into instinct.
There are two reasons why the transition to XHTML hasn't happened:
As long as browsers try to interpret messy markup, few people are going to care. It's the "good enough" attitude. "Quirks mode" is the big bad here. Browsers and visual authoring tools need to tell users that the page they are looking at is non-conformant and warn that it may not behave correctly. No other softare on the planet is as forgiving of the data it handles as web browesers.
If GCC still compiled C code when curly braces, paretheses, and quote marks are omitted at random, how much shittier would all the C code in the world be?
At least the W3C is doing something about the quagmire, but working in parallel is just a waste of time. Let HTML be, it's old and busted. XHTML is the new hotness. The W3C can spew out all the Recommendations (the flimsient of terms) it wants, but no one is going to care unless there's some enforcement at the other end of the line.
One thing the W3C needs to do is get off the semantic web high horse; it's putting the cart before the horse. They need to evangelize correctness, and the semantic web (plus other aspects) will follow naturally.
So, all you so called "developers" and "designers", keep on churning out your HTML 4.01 Transitional pages (or let Dreamweaver do it for you) with bloated table layouts. You'll keep contributing to the problem.
xHTML is dead. (Score:3, Informative)
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The W3C position is that Google, for example, should not be required to enjoy or research the web. Their view is that the web pages themselves should provide the context and relevency information that Google is doing. They want discrete, well formated information that's reletively unchanging. Another example is Wikipedia. The current version is a data
that isn't what people really want (Score:3, Insightful)
Presentation is everything. Humans are emotional, not logical.
PDF and Flash are damn close to what people want. The main thing holding them back is that they aren't as integrated into the browser as HTML.
Re:WHY XHTML are going unnoticed ? (Score:5, Insightful)
HTML doesn't serve its purpose, because it doesn't mandate a lack of separation between content and style. For one, that means that it's difficult to process HTML pages with semantic tools. One of my favourite recent reads has been Visualising the Semantic Web [amazon.com] ed. Geroimenko and Chen (Springer Verlag, 2005), which shows the rich possibilities of extracting information and transforming it, such as into a graphical display, or reorganizing it. This is all a cinch with any valid XHTML Strict page, but as long as we're stuck in HTML 4.01, these abilities will never be widely available to us.
Furthermore, creators of accessibility software are constantly marching uphill. Just yesterday the BBC had a report [bbc.co.uk] on how hard it is for blind users to use most plain HTML websites.
Parent
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What does redesigning the whole world over again for 10% of the population sound like ?
It sounds like overdoing it for me.
Re:WHY XHTML are going unnoticed ? (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508 [wikipedia.org]
Parent
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Well said.
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Maybe HTML doesn't serve your purposes, but it certainly serves my purposes.
Personally, I couldn't care less about fuzzy concepts like the separation of content and style; I just want to be able to write webpages in nano which look decent to most visitors.
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Honestly, I don't see the need for anything beyond HTML 3.2. All this new crap does is get in the way.
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Re:WHY XHTML are going unnoticed ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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This is a response to the WHATWG and Hoehrmann (Score:4, Informative)
I believe that this is a response to the actions of the WHATWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group) [whatwg.org] (X)HTML 5 [whatwg.org] and to Bjoern Hoehrmann leaving the W3C QA [w3.org].
So it's not a new pie-in-the-sky idea like XForms or XHTML2, but something much more likely to be useful to web developers that need to work in a world where IE is (still) the biggest fish.
Parent
Mod parent up --- lack of iframe blocks Strict use (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Mod parent up --- lack of iframe blocks Strict (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:evolution of languages has to be gentle (Score:4, Informative)
This requirement isn't just bureaucratic mumbo jumbo. Ensuring that all (valid) XML documents follow rules like this is what makes them so easy to parse quickly and unambiguously.
There are automated tools (e.g., Tidy) that will do most of the work for static pages. But there really aren't "thousands of pages" to deal with; the HTML to XHTML conversion process is pretty simple [about.com].The real problems with XHTML are:
- It makes some common idioms, notably including embedded Javascript code, much more awkward to write correctly.
- There's no payoff for most sites.
Item 2 is the real killer. If everyone is happily parsing "tag soup" HTML, which is often not compliant to any standard, why jump through the hoops (however easy those jumps might be) to comply with a standard that brings no immediate benefit?Parent