Re: <address> For Style

On Wed, 9 May 2001, Masayasu Ishikawa wrote:

> Indeed the `address' element is vague.  The current HTML Working Group
> didn't invent this element, rather, they had to succeed this vaguely
> specified element from previous works, and they didn't really have
> freedom to change this element up to Modularization of XHTML.

It could have been made deprecated earlier (4.0) like for example 'menu'.
But being wise afterwards is of course always easy.

> In XHTML 2.0, the HTML WG is considering to change this, for example,
> deprecate it for a vCard-like element.  Nothing is decided so far,
> and if you have any idea how to improve/replace this element, please
> send your comments to www-html@w3.org.

Sounds very good indeed. Today is is impossible to "machine read" a HTML
page with the address element and make any sense of it as what it
contains has no structure. The content of the address element today have
to be read and interpreted by humans to make any sense.

The question is though what relation this has to the META elements in the
HTML HEAD which you also can use to specify "author". Like:

  <link rev="made" href="mailto:henrik@edlund.org" />

Should such a new element replace these META elements, add to them, or
should we in really just use META elements and leave
contact/address/author information off the actual BODY of the page. Good
implemented browsers could have a feature to display these META elements,
like for example by clicking "Author info" somewhere in the interface.
The good idea with this if that you don't clutter up the page with
contact/address information, and the bad thing is that you either need
browser support or view the HTML source to see who the actual author is.

Comments?

Regards,

 Henrik

-- 
Henrik Edlund <henrik@edlund.org>
http://www.edlund.org/

  "They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Naturally they became heroes."
                  Leia Organa of Alderaan, Senator

Received on Tuesday, 8 May 2001 11:26:25 UTC