Tim Berners-Lee on Reinventing HTML

This may not be the proper mailing list to discuss the
future of HTML / XHTML, but I thought many people would
like to read what Tim Berners-Lee wrote on Friday,
about the the need to create a new HTML working group:

  http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/166

I think the current situation is a mess.  Despite a well
designed (IMHO) standard since the late 1990s (HTML 4.01),
80% or more of people use a browser (MSIE) which doesn't
implement basic OBJECT elements according to the standard,
and worse still requires OBJECT elements to be used in a
 way which (so I read) does not work with
standards-compliant browsers.  I understand that CSS support
is still a problem with MSIE.  However, since I run Windows
2000, not XP, I can't try out MSIE 7.

Web designers have to make their sites work with this
rotten MSIE 6 browser, whilst trying to be standards
compliant.

Meanwhile, most web designers don't have the time or the
intellect to follow all the minutiae of HTML standards and
browser incompatibilities.  (I think life is too short
to try to understand all this stuff fully.)  Most designers
rely on flashy "HTML authoring" software which (as far as I
know) produces HTML which is far from elegant.

I can't see how this mess can be resolved in less than
4 or 5 years, but I look forward to using Amaya for
creating and maintaining my relatively modest web sites.

 - Robin

Received on Monday, 30 October 2006 12:57:29 UTC