Re: DIV/CLASS: Mike Wexler: Re: HTML 3.2

On Wed, 15 May 1996 13:09:01 -0700 (PDT), Benjamin Franz <snowhare@netimages.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 15 May 1996, Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet wrote:
> > In article <199605142148.AA026890508@w3.org>,
> > "Dave Raggett" <dsr@w3.org> wrote:
> > >  HTML 3.2 on the other hand captures the state of
> > > HTML as deployed in early `96. 
> > For what definition of "deployed"? Why aren't the *deployed* attributes
> > SRC and PLAIN in the HTML 3.2 drafts? Lynx 2.5, UdiWWW and Emacs-W3
> > support them, at least.
> 
> In the last 20.3 million (actual logged hits since Nov. 1st) on a popular
> site I maintain, there have been ZERO hits by lynx 2.5 (75,437 hits by all
> other versions of lynx), ZERO hits by UdiWWW (all versions) and 150 hits
> by Emacs-W3 (all versions). By any rational standard, features in
> supported only in UdiWWW, Emacs-W3 and lynx 2.5 cannot be identified as
> deployed.

Well, HTML 2.0 is supposed to capture the state of the art in 1994. It
lists (for example) the TITLE attribute for the anchor element. Does
any popular browser (by your definition) deploy it even now in 1996? No.
But it is still in there. So I think it is reasonable to ask just what
the W3C wants to use as definition for deployed.

Technically, anything that any browser no matter how obscure has ever
implemented is deployed. However, this is obviously an unreasonable
definition. Defining it to be only that which the current versions of
all browsers support is going to be too restrictive (some still don't
support tables for example). So where to draw the line? IMHO, the
criterion should not just be how widely something has been deployed
but also how useful it might be.

Finally, I would add that browsers are not the only thing looking at
your code. There are also search engines making use of for example the
META tags.

Marcus
--
Marcus E. Hennecke
marcush@crc.ricoh.com        http://www.crc.ricoh.com/~marcush/

Received on Wednesday, 15 May 1996 16:33:43 UTC