HTML to be 'Incrementally Evolved' 359
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."
HTML is broken (Score:1, Insightful)
HTML relies too much on the order of the content for presentation. It should be more like the workflow in a DTP program: Add a text box to the layout, then fill it with text.
More focus on standard the most will ignore. (Score:3, Insightful)
A Waste of Time (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:More focus on standard the most will ignore. (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The problem with XHTML... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've done parsers that "scrub" HTML for constructs that might cause security risks or mess up the site layout too, that had to accept almost all "sane" html, and even that isn't particularly hard, though quite a bit more work.
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)
Re:WHY XHTML are going unnoticed ? (Score:3, 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.
Re:WHY XHTML are going unnoticed ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Advantages? (Score:5, 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.
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.
Re:WHY XHTML are going unnoticed ? (Score:2, Insightful)
You could argue that they should have outright removed all of the HTML tags that only provide styling, but we all know that won't stop browsers from rendering them for compatibility.
If you really think XHTML is better, think again. While it doesn't support , it still supports , , , , , and more presentational tags. Also, since that strange browser from Redmond doesn't support the proper MIME type, XHTML is rendered as HTML anyway, making the effort useless.
No, the real issue here is bad web designers.
Re:evolution of languages has to be gentle (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Advantages? (Score:3, Insightful)
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:A Waste of Time (Score:2, Insightful)
Most people who use XHTML do so for the wrong reasons. Part of them do because it's the newest cool thing.
Re:Mod parent up --- lack of iframe blocks Strict (Score:3, Insightful)