Re: Cleaning House

On May 2, 2007, at 9:58 AM, Lee Roberts wrote:

>
> I don't post much, but I do have concerns.
>
> 1.  How long do we need to continue to support deprecated tags?

Probably forever. At least, I don't think the content using them will  
disappear entirely from the web any time soon, if ever.

> HTML5 should require cleaner standards.  It should be one standard  
> and not a
> conglomerate or hodgepodge mess.  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 think it's asking too much of a formal specification to be as easy  
to understand as a "For Dummies" book.

> 2.  I'm not sure who said it, but I think my memory is correct ...  
> if not
> I'm welcome to correction.
>
> A valid page does not need <html>, <head>, <body> or their respective
> closing tags.  In a sense, the following would make a page work.
>
> <title>Some Title</title>
> <p>Some text.</p>
>
> 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.

The example you cited is a fully conforming document according to  
HTML 4.01. In what way does support for this aspect of the spec  
(where the HTML, HEAD and BODY open tags are implicit) lead you to  
believe that browsers don't care about standards?

> While we may not have had the advantage of having Microsoft,  
> Mozilla, Apple,
> and Opera on the previous teams, we do now.  This advantage should  
> give us a
> better chance of getting the browser developers to support the  
> standards
> without division.

More consistent support would certainly be good.

> For example, CSS is probably the biggest problem we have for cross  
> browser
> support.  Add a border and we have browsers doing different  
> things.  We
> cannot leave interpretation to the browser developers as has been  
> available
> to them before.  If we expect the standard to work it must be  
> concrete.

That would be a task for the CSS Working Group, not this one.

> 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.
>
> 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.

HTML5 already includes much cleanup, including removal of many  
elements and attributes, and much clearer conformance requirements.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Wednesday, 2 May 2007 20:59:02 UTC