Re: A suggestion from the public

Justin James wrote:
> The overall idea is that people want a simplified
> version of HTML, that does not require CSS, with a low barrier to entry.

I understand that people want a low barrier to entry. Then they should 
simply use the top ten of elements for a semantic document, probably 
h1-h3, p, ul, ol, div, li, a, img, and strong. That's what I tell our 
interns and students.

What I do not understand is why somebody dislikes CSS. I am old enough 
to remember the pain of slicing images and putting them into nested 
tables that were blown apart as soon as you miscalculated the amount of 
colspans. Also CSS has low entry barriers. Don't start with float hell, 
work your way up from absolute positioned elements through relative 
position, crossbrowser floating elements, and then flexible layouts with 
increasable font-size and mobile support.

I see the following options:
a) They continue to use Frontpage (shudder) and simply don't care about 
the quality of code (or validation),
b) they use CMS frameworks anyway were they just select another 
WordPress template without getting their hands dirty,
c) they want to learn a professional craft and start with the easy 
things. Nothing wrong about that. But setting the standards low to 
support nephew design is the wrong way.

HTML and CSS and DOM is very easy to begin with as long as your 
expectations are low. But the exciting thing is you never stop learning 
new things. :)

Cheers,
   Martin

Received on Wednesday, 28 October 2009 19:59:45 UTC