Cougar Critique - general

Just noticed that there is now somewhat more than just a DTD in
the <http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/Cougar/> section. Although I
realize it's still in an early stage, I'd like to make some comments.

First, I can't help but notice that the index document there does
not conform to HTML 3.2. ALT texts are missing in the client-side
imagemap, "_top" is not quoted, and one of the mailto links uses
the ?subject hack which is not valid according to RFC 1738 and breaks
a lot of browsers. I'm aware of the proposal that "justifies" it,
but until that replaces the definition of "mailto", it's invalid.

My overall feeling is that this is even more a "codification of
current practice" than HTML 3.2 is. Frames, scripts, it's all in
there. There are a few little changes, but mostly it seems taken
directly from how Netscape/IE implement things. The only really
noteworthy change I saw was that NOFRAMES is finally given a purpose;
it can now be used anywhere in BODY to hide material for frames-capable 
browsers. Nice one.

What I am missing is the 'big picture' here. What is going to be in
Cougar, and what is optional? Are clients now required to support
frames? Will there be a Cougar DTD?

-- 
E-mail: galactus@htmlhelp.com .................... PGP Key: 512/63B0E665
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Received on Friday, 4 April 1997 14:23:26 UTC