Re: OBJECT out of hand

On 29 Apr 98, "Garth Wallace" <gwalla@hotmail.com> wrote:

> The OBJECT tag seems overloaded to me. If the point of HTML is to 
> describe content, why eliminate two descriptive and intuitive tags and 
> replace them with something generic? By descriptive tags I am referring 

Because something generic is needed. Why? ...IMG cannot specify 
alternative image, video, or other file/object formats. OBJECT elements 
can be nested, hence one can do the following:

<OBJECT DATA="floorplans.dwg" TYPE="image/vnd.dwg">
 <OBJECT DATA="floorplans.png" TYPE="image/png">
  <IMG SRC="floorplans.gif">
 </OBJECT>
</OBJECT>

There's no need to differentiate between a static image, an animation or 
movie, an applet or interactive widget or something else. And OBJECT 
allows a more extensible way to describe things and specify options or 
parameters (using PARAM).

OBJECT is also extensible... so when a new type of widget is invented, 
there's an easier way to plug it in to the document than have to invent a 
new type of element.

EMBED is meant to serve that purpose, but it's implementation of using 
object-specific attributes rather than parameters means that documents 
can never conform to the DTD. APPLET is more flexible but it is Java- 
specific. Hence the OBJECT element.

> [..]
> Things like this really need to have separate tags, if only to make the 
> HTML source understandable. I know that John Doe on Geocities uses 
> FrontPage to design his site, but some of us still hand-code the stuff.

It doesn't make HTML source any less understandable. It does make the 
document as viewed by the user more understandable.

Rob

Received on Friday, 1 May 1998 00:25:13 UTC