Re: Cleaning House

On May 2, 2007, at 12:58 PM, Lee Roberts wrote:

> [...]
>
> 1.  How long do we need to continue to support deprecated tags?  HTML4
> attempted to clean house by deprecating tags in lieu of CSS abilities.

Forever. The specification must contain details on how to process the  
deprecated tags so that UAs of the future will know how to process  
old documents.

> [...]
>
> It should be easy for the novice Web
> designer to understand, unlike previous standards.  The language  
> used should
> be easy for ninth graders to understand - no one should need a Ph.  
> D. or
> degree in computer programming/technologies.

I definitely agree. One of the major goals of this group should be to  
ensure that the standard is as clear and concise as possible. HTML4,  
as it is right now, isn't terrible for a novice to read, but its also  
lacking in a lot of areas with respect to how much information is  
provided. WHATWG HTML5 provides much more information, but the  
structure of the spec is much harder to approach for someone who  
knows little or nothing about HTML.

Once we have the editors ironed out, and the design principals  
finalized, and the adoption of WHATWG HTML5 done, I think we should  
begin looking at this.

>
> 2. [...]
>
> Browsers that support this kind of page development seem to ignore  
> the base
> requirements for proper page development.  In other words, they  
> don't care
> about standards, promoting standards, or even developing  
> standards.  If my
> view is wrong, please correct me.

Browsers don't care about any of that, but the Vendors do, that's why  
they're here! :)

>
> 3.  Instead removing accessibility features such as table summary and
> headers, it might be beneficial to examine the accessibility  
> guidelines
> before making such recommendations.  As Charles McCathieNevile  
> points out,
> table summary, headers, and ids have long been use cases for  
> accessibility.

Has Hixie commented about why these features were removed? I'm  
inclined to agree, but I've yet to hear comment from the other side.

>
> 4.  Can't we start by cleaning up the HTML4.x and XHTML1.x  
> standards?  After
> we clean that up, I think we could then discuss new elements such  
> as term,
> canvas, and others.

Is there a problem with accepting the WHATWG HTML5 specification as a  
starting point? A lot of this work was already done.

>
>
> Thank you for taking the time to read this post.
>
> Regards,
> Lee Roberts
>
>


- Elliott

Received on Wednesday, 2 May 2007 17:56:07 UTC