Deprecated presentation elements

> 1.8. Avoid the use of deprecated presentation elements and attributes (as well as B and I).
>      Authors should use style sheets instead of presentation elements (TT, and FONT) and attributes ("align" and "background") that control visual
>      presentation. Authors are encouraged to use elements (such as STRONG, EM, H1, H2, ABBR, etc.) that add structure to documents.   Documents
>      that use style sheets for presentation allow users to adjust the look of the document (e.g., larger print, color contrast, etc.) through personal style
>      sheets or browser settings. 

First, the HTML 4.0 elements that have been deprecated should be listed.
They are:
APPLET, BASEFONT, CENTER, DIR, FONT, ISINDEX, MENU, S, STRIKE, and U.

Second, this guideline as a whole should be a little softer. It suggests
that deprecated 
presentation elements should be avoided entirely. A safer bet might be
to use deprecated
elements along with newer style-sheet based approaches in order to
maintain backward
compatability while still providing for the future.

Third, the suggestion to avoid using the ALIGN and BACKGROUND attributes
is also a little
extreme and similar in spirit to the second point above. If some version
of this point
gets included, the list of affected elements should also be mentioned.

Josh Krieger
CAST

Received on Tuesday, 2 June 1998 08:56:30 UTC