Re: Tips for deprecated tags and attributes

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:
 
> such issues are controversial

It shouldn't be _too_ controversional, because my Netscape 3.x
can display a lot of pages without any problems.  Including
almost all "transitional" pages (minus CSS, <del>, and JS
better than 1.1).

> what should be allowed in "legacy DTD"

A subset of "transitional", but a bit more than in "strict".
Actually it's not that important, but it could be the fastest
way to implement "tips for deprecated tags and attributes".

Because I insist on "visible with my own browser", I'm forced
to use "transitional", and because I use "transitional" the
validator can't show me really unncessary obsolete features:

I found the new "no textual content outside of block tags"
rule in 1.1, because I tested XHTML 1.1 (IIRC) once just for
fun with the validator.  But I can't do this always, because
I'd get lots of useless "align=" and "name=" errors.

Therefore some of my new pages contain useless features, only
because I can't test it against a "simple" DTD.  Probably I'm
not alone with this problem, any working fragment (with my
browser) indicates a page, which can't be "strict" or better.

> Naturally you can write your own DTD

In theory.  In practice I never tried this, and the "legacy"
module is not exactly what I want.  And I have no idea what
modern browsers would do with a private DTD.

> it could also allow some common extensions like <embed>

Yes, there was a thread about this here some days ago.  The
author solved his problem with <object>, and I didn't want to
muddy the waters with Netscape 3.x, because I have no flash
plugin (or rather, I disabled a broken plugin),

> I don't see why <div align="center"> would be any better
> than <center>

It's not exactly better.  But align= is already essential for
pages trying to be compatible with legacy browsers.  If that's
the case, then the deprectated <center> is redundant (for new
pages, I'm always talking about new XHTML pages).

> why <del> should be used together with <s>

Like name= and id=, the latter for new browses, the former for
old browsers, and any browser knowing both should be able to
handle this somehow.  E.g. <del> has more attributes than <s>.

> <del> is only allowed with <s>

That would be the idea.  I was _really_ upset when I found a
W3C document "diff-marked" with <del> (i.e. invisible with my
browser... ;-)

OTOH I was quite pleased when Lynx ignored any <font size=...>
but displayed <small><big><big> like a single <big>.

> Authors may wish to avoid certain transitional features and
> keep using others

Yes, that's me.  And the W3C validator is a very good way to
learn XHTML (which is IMNSHO much simpler than HTML), but at
the moment it can't do anything for me if I want to avoid some
unnecessary "transitional" features.

> maybe start talking about the weather, or what clothes we
> should wear, or what HTML design principles we should apply,

The tip of the day goes in this direction, sometimes.  That's
not necessarily bad.  And I (ab)use(d) the W3C validator as an
educational tool.
                   Bye, Frank

Received on Tuesday, 20 April 2004 16:59:21 UTC