Apple, Opera, and Mozilla Push For HTML5 384
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."
Opera (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.opera.com/download/ [opera.com]
Talk about spin! (Score:5, Informative)
No, the W3C have been very busy [w3.org].
No, XHTML was last updated two months ago [w3.org].
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.
Misses the point (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How will this effect IE7 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'd settle for some taking away (Score:3, Informative)
I agree that it's silly that they are required attributes, but merely missing the attributes off doesn't dump you into quirks mode. Quirks mode is determined by the doctype you use.
Re:Firefox plugin (Score:2, Informative)
Multi-column is already in the pipeline (Score:4, Informative)
The CSS3 multi-column module [css3.info] was designed for exactly that purpose. It's available in experimental form in current Mozilla-based browsers (Firefox, Seamonkey, Camino, etc.), and according to that page, it's available in nightly builds of Webkit, which will eventually become a future version of Safari. (Since the spec isn't final, the rules use -moz and -webkit prefixes, so that if the spec changes they won't have to change the official rule's behavior.) No word from Opera, though there are reportedly a bunch of CSS3 features in store for the next major update, and of course, who knows how long before we'll see it in IE.
Remember: HTML for structure, CSS for layout.
Re:Please, give us better layout tools (Score:5, Informative)
What happens when your page gets displayed on a phone? With CSS you can simply revert to a single column (or the phone can just drop the CSS), with "grid", you need two pages, one for desktops, and one for phones.
I think XHTML is fine, it works and does the job. The only thing I would like is a client side include. Apart from that, I think CSS needs updating, not (X)HTML (or perhaps just browser support for CSS?).
be nice if HTML was deprecated (Score:2, Informative)
here's an example: without knowledge about HTML, a parser cannot be expected to understand in the first case that the <br> element is empty and in the second that the <li> element is not.
Re:I'd settle for some taking away (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The More they add, the less I like (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed.
To the GP: I recently redesigned my main website [thelostworlds.net] 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.
Re:Talk about spin! (Score:3, Informative)
You're welcome to that opinion, but I think the fact that it's a work-in-progress is the relevant factor to consider when wondering why people aren't using it. Even the W3C themselves don't want anybody to use it yet. In their own words, from the top of the latest specification [w3.org]: "It should in no way be considered stable, and should not be normatively referenced for any purposes whatsoever."
Lynx already supports application/xhtml+xml. According to the changelog [isc.org], support was added almost three years ago.
Re:This could be the leverage needed against MS (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'd settle for some taking away (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The More they add, the less I like (Score:1, Informative)
So your pages are designed for @media = screen and projection only? What about tty, handheld, print and tv media types that view your page? Here CSS comes in real handy.
Re:The More they add, the less I like (Score:3, Informative)
No, IE can handle box model perfectly. It's XHTML it can't handle at all. You must be sending your pages as HTML (text/html) and you've put XML prolog in your HTML, which triggers quirks mode (you may think it's XHTML, but browsers see it as HTML with lots of syntax errors and bogus DOCTYPE).
obligatory hixie reference [hixie.ch]
Re:The More they add, the less I like (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The More they add, the less I like (Score:4, Informative)
Well read the spec then. That's the HTML 5 doctype [whatwg.org]. The only reason they use a doctype at all is because otherwise it would trigger quirks mode.
Re:And meanwhile in IE Land... (Score:4, Informative)
A fundamental design principle of HTML5 is that HTML5 pages should work in existing browsers like IE6. You can write <input type="email">, and an HTML5 browser will allow useful auto-filling and immediate validation feedback, while old browsers will simply show a text box. New elements like <video> can have fallback content, e.g. to embed a Flash video player. New elements like <canvas> can be partially implemented by JavaScript in IE6. The HTML5 doctype (<!DOCTYPE HTML>) is chosen so that it triggers standards mode (as opposed to quirks mode) in all existing browsers.
So, you can write in HTML5 to provide added benefits for users of browsers that understand HTML5, while still being no worse than before for users of older browsers. And given that IE development has started up again, with IE7 making some progress on CSS standards compliance, and given that Microsoft is a member of the W3C's HTML working group which will almost certainly accept the current HTML5 work (as it was the reason for the working group to be formed, and nobody has raised any serious objections since it was proposed), I believe there is reason to be hopeful.
Re:Talk about spin! (Score:5, Informative)
That's not a relevant factor for the Safari developers to say [webkit.org] "the HTML standards process has been moribund; the W3C's HTML Working Group has focused almost exclusively on XHTML2, a new standard that was highly incompatible with existing practice" and "We declined to participate in the XHTML2 Working Group because we think XHTML2 is not an appropriate technology for the web". As far as I am aware, Mozilla, Opera and Microsoft are all not planning to ever implement XHTML2, whereas they are already working on HTML5 – HTML5 also has many features that are work-in-progress and which nobody is using yet, but which the browser vendors are already implementing, because they are valuable changes and don't break compatibility with the current hundred billion documents on the web.
Re:Today is NOT a good day to die. (Score:4, Informative)
He makes about 35% markup on orders like that. As of a more recent check (some hours since I chimed in on the thread), the ancient-browser-checkouts have now grossed about $2200. We'll call that, conservatively, about $500 of profit (not counting taxes, flushing the toilets, pizza for the warehouse guys, etc).
the site must look unappealingly 1997
No, I'd say it looks more early-2005. The design is deliberately lean, spartan, and surprisingly navigable considering they have around 12,000 items. The are leveraging Froogle, affiliate marketing with feeds and hot links into products... lots of the more recent goodies. There are some nested tables in play, still... but they come back with first-page Google hits on a great deal of what they talk about and sell.
Responsiveness is huge
Yes, it is. But any latency I've had to fight was almost always due to database performance problems, usually because some session management table or other beastie had outgrown the way the indexes were built, etc. Believe me... a complete redesign for new standards is desireable, and could indeed bring in some otherwise missed sales. But it's nice to not run off the little old ladies and their credit cards, too. 10 of them today, it looks like. That's about 300 of them per month, and they do a lot of repeat business... the business has about a 45% repeat customer rate. Which might not sound great until you realize they're growing rapidly. So, don't "meh" something that's working pretty solidly, and which is very much a topic of discussion and planning at the business. My point (back to the thread, here) is that the "web designer" to said "when was the last time you even say a machine running IE5" is full of crap. I'm not just seeing them, I'm seeing them show up and spend money.
Re:The More they add, the less I like (Score:3, Informative)
I agree with everything else you said, but have to defer to the other guy on this one.
CSS allows you to play with the box properties (like borders and padding and margins), but the box model is the direct result of the div structure of XHTML 1.*. I know why you say otherwise. Conventionally, when we talk about the box model, we are talking about CSS's use of it, but technically, convention is wrong, in that the box is defined in the XHTML rather than the CSS.
God. I am such a 'tard that I couldn't let this minor point go uncorrected. lol! Forgive my pedantry.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]
Re:Update CSS not XHTML/HTML (Score:3, Informative)
The past new years I've noticed that the browser world has become IE versus "the rest". Firefox, Opera and Konqueror seem to render everything nearly identically. 95% of the rendering problems during website development seem to come from IE, and IE only.
Re:Forget HTML, it's CSS that's Broken, deal with (Score:2, Informative)
http://alistapart.com/articles/holygrail [alistapart.com]
Here's another:
http://www.glish.com/css/7.asp [glish.com]
But yeah, it's hard. Lot's of people have found solutions to the problems, though. Even if it is cumbersome, I think it's better than visual markup.
Re:The More they add, the less I like (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I'd settle for some taking away (Score:3, Informative)
Er, we do, and it's actually the default. Load a page without any styling information at all and see for yourself. If you want to specify a width, use { width: 75%; } or whatever relative width you like instead of using px, pt or whatever you are using now.