Re: The Future of HTML (was: Acronyms and Abbreviations)

jason wrote:

"But please, don't dwell on these examples (and how dumb they
are).  I'm more interested in hearing what the *experts* feel
are the shortcomings of HTML 4.0, and what can be done to
improve matters."

the fact is , with XHTML we will be able to add our own tags, and use a
style sheet to tell the browser how they should be displayed, so HTML as it
is now is really stable. There is highly unlikely to be any new HTML
elements in the future.

the only exception to this is 'forms' where the XHTML working group have a
mandate to develop a whole new forms architecture.

Frank (speaking for myself and not the WG)


----- Original Message -----
From: <JOrendorff@ixl.com>
To: <www-html@w3.org>
Sent: Friday, October 22, 1999 8:37 PM
Subject: The Future of HTML (was: Acronyms and Abbreviations)


> I am hereby killing the ACRONYM thread, with apologies to
> those who have contributed interesting germane stuff.
>
>
> I'll happily suggest a substitute topic:
>
> We often see suggestions from folks frustrated with browsers'
> HTML layout limitations. The first thought of many such people
> is, "It would be nice if HTML had a tag <FOO> that did this."
> The response to that kind of suggestion is pretty standard.
>
> For a change, I'd like to hear from those of you who really
> know HTML.  HTML 4.0 does have gaps.  What tags do you think
> belong in future versions?
>
> For example, (and I don't claim to be an authority on this
> at all) I'd like to see markup for names:
>
>   <name of="book">The Elements of Style</name>
>   <name of="song">Penny Lane</name>
>   <name of="periodical">The Alarmist</name>
>
> ...since these are often rendered differently from surrounding
> text, at least in English.  Stylesheets could do that.  Instead,
> I end up using <i> and quotes.
>
> I'd also like some standard markup for notes:
>
>   <note class="footnote">However, 66% of HTML authors have
>   never heard of stylesheets.</note>
>
>   <note class="stickynote" author="johnq@ixl.co">We should be
>   more upbeat here.  After all, we did save these guys $2M.</note>
>
> Also, I'm curious about <cite>; it seems it should have an
> attribute <cite for="idref"> that allows the author to specify
> what the cited authority is being cited for.
>
>
> But please, don't dwell on these examples (and how dumb they
> are).  I'm more interested in hearing what the *experts* feel
> are the shortcomings of HTML 4.0, and what can be done to
> improve matters.
>
> --
> Jason
>

Received on Saturday, 23 October 1999 00:22:44 UTC