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Is It Time for a 'Kinder, Gentler HTML'?
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Nov 30, 2007 10:01 AM
from the because-the-current-one-is-pointy dept.
from the because-the-current-one-is-pointy dept.
jg21 writes "Via the Web 2.0 Journal, a worthy link to Yahoo! Architect and JSON inventor Douglas Crockford's latest ideas to fix HTML. He's categorically not a fan of HTML 5, which is still just an Editor's Draft and not endorsed by W3C yet. Crock puts forward ten ideas that in his view would provide extensibility without complexity, adding that the simplification of HTML he is proposing would reduce the cost of training of web developers and incorporates the best practices of AJAX development. From the article: 'The problems with HTML will not be solved by making it bigger and more complicated. I think instead we should generalize what it does well, while excising features that are problematic. HTML can be made into a general application delivery format without disrupting its original role as a document format.'"
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Not Impressed (Score:5, Insightful)
Make sure you have about 2 minutes to spare. You're going to need about that long to read it from beginning to end. What you'll probably find is that he hasn't really solved any of the major issues plaguing HTML or even thought through many of the problems and use-cases that HTML 5 is trying to solve. In fact, his entire "design" can be summed up with the following sentence: "Let's get rid of HTML features that I believe cause problems."
Meanwhile, he still leaves the problems of consistent parsing, semantic meaning, multimedia presentation, and a whole host of other issues unaddressed. Which means that his "design" fails to compete with the intended purpose of HTML 5 at even the most basic level.
I have the highest respect for Mr. Crockford, but my opinion is that he should study the reasons behind HTML 5 a bit more carefully, as well as solicit a bit more feedback from the community before attempting to push a non-solution to their problems. Best of luck to him.
Re:Not Impressed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Not Impressed (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet, if I was involved in the HTML5 drafts I'd be insulted. He does dismiss an actual complete design (HTML5), in favor of few vague niceties and abstract wishes that don't change the big picture even a bit.
Does it really matter so much if we'll use DOCTYPE or version="5" attribute to specify the document type?
HTML5 is trying to prepare the web to handle robust web applications, and he's there dissing it and saying "let's instead just drop some legacy features, put some syntactic sugar on it and call it a day".
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Kinder? Gentler? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Kinder? Gentler? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Not Impressed (Score:5, Interesting)
When will HTML 5 be finished?
It is estimated that HTML5 will reach a W3C recommendation in the year 2022 or later. This will be approximately 18-20 years of development, since beginning in mid-2004.
http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#When_will_HTML_5_be_finished.3F [whatwg.org]
That seems like a really long time for something like this to go through, even for something as massive as the web standard.
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Re:Not Impressed (Score:5, Informative)
If you count arguing on the mailing list a few times and coming up with a new Canvas adapter (still WIP) for IE, then I suppose.
Reading that FAQ entry in its entirety helps clarify the issue; at least for me. The WHATWG is being pragmatic about how long it will take them to both get a 100% complete standard (it has continued to evolve, even after being submitted to the W3C) and get everyone on board with it. People don't realize quite how long it took to get the variations of CSS, DOM, and HTML4 standardized and implemented. They've been available for over a decade, but we're only reaping the benefits of these standards now.
That being said, the W3C does expect parts of the specification to be implemented sooner rather than later:
In result, it really doesn't matter when the HTML 5 standard is fully realized. We will be (and already are) reaping the benefits of it long before it's 100% complete.
Of course, they did get it submitted to the W3C ahead of schedule. And the W3C is taking it more seriously than originally expected. So don't be surprised if they're ahead of schedule on completion.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not Impressed (Score:4, Insightful)
"[R]eads this and gets upset". Again, who is he talking about? This hardly sounds "upset":
?
Here's an amazing answer for you: Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Evaluate your project needs before choosing a solution.
Seriously, you mods need to lay off the crack. Or at least share with the rest of us.
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Re:Not Impressed (Score:4, Interesting)
Looks to me like you only read for one minute ;-)
To give the limited amount of credit due, he does go on to some decent sounding suggestions. Nothing in there is actually unreasonable, some things sound like a good idea (UTF-8, browsers stop trying to correct for crap pages if version>=5). I'm still reading the stuff on Modules, or will be when the server responds :(
Perhaps someone else can try to fix the other things you mention.
Justin.
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Re:Not Impressed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3)
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Re:Not Impressed (Score:4, Informative)
Basically, there is a reason that CSS RESET stylsheets have been created, and it is to get the browser back to a simulated "unstyled" state. It is stupid and should be unnecessary. It's a workaround for a deficiency in current browser tech. I say fix the tech. Part of the problem with CSS is that your selectors have to assume that each browser has a different baseline, when the baseline should itself be a stylesheet that can be turned off (I am not talking about user-specified stylesheets, which should still override. Not the same as a browser baseline.)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
What I am arguing for is a styling language that doesn't suck balls. I've been doing CSS since forever, and I'm finally completely fed up with it. It solv
Captain Hook (Score:3, Funny)
What would the world be without Captain Hook!
Re:Not Impressed (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, he's proposing MORE problems. Here's my take...
Why? Adding a "version" attribute it just going to break compatibility. The "web" has enough problems with compatibility, lets not inject MORE. Doctypes work fine. Sure, it's long and doesn't appear to make much sense reading it, but... if it's not broke, don't 'fix' it.
I'm sorry but the auther hasn't presented any compelling reason why this is a 'good idea'(tm) and I can think of several reasons this is a 'bad idea'(tm). Do have I have to mention active X, proprietary languages, and 'broken' sites because of it? Then the need for Web.Devs. job skills increase significantly and become much more cumbersome.
Hmmm... I don't like frames per say. I don't use them. Though, I don't see how modules are going to make things better or easier but more complex. A frame was simple. A window in a window. That's simple. If Developers abused them, it's the developers fault, not the language for having it. With "AJAX" and Flash video, I'm game to just remove frames all together.
It already can be done and this is not the responsibility of HTML. This is as annoying as forcing ones religion on someone else. I'm not going to tell Microsoft they have to use Mozilla's default CSS. Or Apple to stop using their pretty buttons in Safari. Forget it. It's a non-issue. CSS RESET already exists, and developers need to just be educated. Design topics don't have a place in HTML.
While I want to say "I agree with that" because that's what I do, I think, again, "only" is not the right choice. Can we predict the future? Will UTF-8 be suitable 'forever'? Funny, computers original "only" supported latin characters. That wasn't a good idea. "only" supporting UTF-8 is also a bad idea, but I would like to see it used a default.
I agree with this.
I 100% disagree. Standards are standards. If we don't want browsers to "perform heroics" on correcting 'bad code' then lets not give people confusing "standards" of "it's ok to it like this... or like this... or this is 'ok' too!". No.
and . Tags are tags and they have a function. There are no "special" children. But I do think [script] needs empty tag support.
Agree.
What's wrong with "display:block"? If you want a [div] tag use one. If you want to make your own tag name, then don't try to make it a [div]. Div's are "block" elements. If you want a block element then "display:block".
I agree. But are we talking about HTML or JavaScript now? And why are you talking about JavaScript when you already said you don't want to support JavaScript? I'm confused as to your intentions.
Kudos for trying, but I think you missed the target.
Cheers,
Fozzy
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Re:Not Impressed (Score:4, Interesting)
In particular, their treatment of some Asian glyphs has some folks absolutely up in arms (cf. Han unification [wikipedia.org]) and it falls short of what I'd call truly 'universal.'
Start mandating UTF-8 and you're going to have people breaking the standard in favor of national charsets faster than you can say "cultural imperialist."
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Re:Not Impressed (Score:4, Insightful)
The "controversy" about Han unification is inane nationalistic posturing on the part of those Asian nations; it has no basis in either linguistics or practice. It's as if every European nation wanted their own codes for the Roman alphabet.
Start mandating UTF-8 and you're going to have people breaking the standard in favor of national charsets faster than you can say "cultural imperialist."
"Han unification" is not "cultural imperialism", it's simply applying the same design principles to Chinese characters that were applied to other languages. People object to Han unification for a variety of reasons, most of them related to nationalism, arrogance, or simply ignorance. For example, there are lingering animosities between Japan and China. And many traditionalists in Asia think of the West as inferior and would have found grounds for objecting to any character set not designed domestically.
The technically correct thing to do is to keep Han unification, just like all other scripts are unified, and address problems with specific glyphs as they come up.
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Re:Not Impressed (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it is not. Unicode was developed by an international group of experts, including plenty of participants from Asia. It represents a reasonable and practical compromise between lots of different design goals. Everybody had to make some sacrifices there. People like you are just trying to rattle people's cages by turning a technical issue into a nationalistic one. "GB 18030" is a China-centric standard, Unicode is a global and neutral standard.
Furthermore, to the degree that there are problems with Unicode and Asian languages, the way to address them is to fix Unicode, not for each Asian nation to fall back to some national character set.
Of course, there are plenty of political and economic incentives for nations like China and Japan to try to have their own national character sets; hopefully, organizations like the UN and WTO will recognize this for what it is: attempts at content control and attempts at erecting illegal trade barriers, and deal with it accordingly.
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Re:Not Impressed (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What's wrong with that? They shouldn't be trying to shoehorn features into HTML that aren't in line with its purpose, marking up hyper text. If you want a rich, network capable, multimedia enabled application framework, write one! Don't ruin my HTML.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Very simple.
"Let's get rid of HTML features that I believe cause problems."
Is not the same as:
"These HTML features have been empirically shown to cause more problems than they solve. Deprecating them will therefore improve the quality of the standard."
XHTML 2 (Score:3, Informative)
"Kinder Gentler," What the Hell Is That? (Score:4, Insightful)
From the part of the proposal entitled "That's It" I learn:
I am by no means an expert on this but I do code web applications for a living. I will tell you that these changes do not necessarily "improve reliability, security and performance" of HTML. You are suggesting changes with mobile devices in mind and the developers in mind. Adding another getElementsByTagName method to Javascript will make it easier for developers but over use of that will only make searching the DOM more intensive and lead to worse performance. And remember the original intent of HTML! If you are complaining that mobile devices can't render what a desktop can, perhaps it's time to look at a mobile-HTML standard and either you put a cross translator on the mobile browsers or you entice developers to make two sites. I'm not opposed to these ideas, I just don't see how they're going to really help anything but the specific users this guy has in mind. They certainly wouldn't help me at all or provide a better user experience for my end users.
This is ridiculous. You are attacking the wrong target here, you should be attacking the browsers that don't behave according to standards like the cowboy Internet Explorer browser that sometimes does whatever it wants. Many nights I have spent hacking code that checks what browser is being run and behaves differently because it's Internet Explorer and not "everybody else."
Also, a bit offtopic but I Googled "kinder gentler" in an attempt to understand its meaning [google.com] and for some reason the first result was the White House page for George Herbert Walker Bush. What the hell?
Personally, I'd rather see a meaner, harsher HTML (Score:4, Funny)
It strikes me that would be the route to go to get rid of all these crappy, poorly done pages.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Easy to use. Forgiving.
Compare YAML (and JSON) to XML, S-Expressions, or (shudder) HTML. YAML's syntax can be stated clearly in about 20 lines of text. JSON's syntax is a subset of that. And yet, YAML is very forgiving. XML requires dozens (or is it hundreds) of pages. H
Re:"Kinder Gentler," What the Hell Is That? (Score:4, Interesting)
GHWB (not to be confused with GHB, which can be metabolized from certain toy paints) was made fun of a lot for one of his campaign mottos, which was "It's time for a kindler, gentler America." Dana Carvey made gravy from spoofing GHWB on SNL, and the "kindler, gentler America" bit was an instant classic.
And this brings me around to my point.That's a separate problem. Admittedly, I'm not a web developer, but it's rather obvious to me that there are very useful changes in HTML5, and ignoring the possibility of improving web standards in favor of attacking non-compliant browsers is not smart. Far better to address both problems -- besides, how constructive is "attacking" non-compliant browsers? In my experience, attacking others is usually not constructive.
In short, I feel like you're making a big statement about best policy with a limited understanding of what's going on. I know for certain that I don't have full knowledge here -- but I'd never claim I know the answer.
But, you know, it's always nice to karma-whore by ripping IE. Sure, IE development may make extra work for you -- but then again, you're being paid for that work. Why not be happy that "that cowboy Internet Explorer" helped you find gainful employment?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But, you know, it's always nice to karma-whore by ripping IE. Sure, IE development may make extra work for you -- but then again, you're being paid for that work. Why not be happy that "that cowboy Internet Explorer" helped you find gainful employment?
Nobody who's ever suffered through the demon that is IE would say that. You know, there's a reason I (and my coworkers) hate it, apparently you just think we hate it because it's fun.
You know, it's fun to finish a javascript method in Firefox with Firebug there to help you debug and step through it. You think it's fun to watch IE bitch about only God knows what and not work. Or simply not show anything at all if you're trying to evoke a method on a javascript object that isn't valid. No feedback,
XML has some benefits. (Score:5, Interesting)
This sounds great, but I feel that by turning HTML into a more well-formed document (i.e., XML instead of SGML), the W3C did browser writers and developers a service. Please, let's not go back to the "guess if there's a closing tag" game. I don't mind the script, frame, module, CSS, encoding, and entity changes, but the custom tags/attributes and looser format limits (quoting, ending tags) seem bad.
Agreed...HTML5 is a step backwards in many ways (Score:4, Interesting)
HTML5 seems to be doing a lot to make sure mediocre developers can stay in their comfort zone and to perpetuate many of the more serious problems we still face today. The HTML5 FAQ makes me cringe in many places!
* "no DOCTYPE. You may include one if you wish, though this is not recommended as they are only relevant when using a validating parser which web browsers do not have." - This is the wrong recommendation and a really stupid rationale. One cannot assume that web browsers will be the only clients to read your document, nor that all clients will lack validating parsers. This saves a small bit of work for lazy HTML authors at the expense of making
* "HTML 5 is being developed with IE compatibility in mind." - This is a backwards way to move forward with proper standards. You design applications towards standards, not standards towards applications. IE is already mostly compatible with existing standards--the solution is to make sure IE8 tows the line, not to bend over for IE developers. In the automation industry, there is a massive, complicated 8-headed beast of a standard called IEC 61158 that is a good example of what happens when applications drive standards. The IEC was somewhat stuck here however because they got into the game late, when all these battling vendor-developed systems were already established. With the Internet, though the situation is not perfect, existing standards hold a fair and increasing amount of influence. I believe the philosophies behind HTML5 don't do enough to prevent the perpetuation of tag soup and loose vendor-driven application of standards.
* "The details are still being worked out, but the plan is to indicate the maturity level on a per-section basis." - This puzzles me: They seem to be abandoning the "modules" approach being sought by XHTML in the interests of simplicity, however it is intended that user-agent developers will be implementing the standard "on a per-section basis" as they figure everything out along the way? And they expect this process to take TWICE AS LONG as XHTML did to establish itself as a ratified standard? I sense a lack of vision here--something along the lines of "lets look at what we've got, put Bondo on the dents and holes then spray it with Tremclad to make it look pretty". Not only that, they've decided that they'll work on the right fender and the left door this year, then the rear bumper next year and so on. There's nothing wrong with incrementally ratifying standards, but how about some VISION and PLANNING? Define some modules and their scopes then set teams upon them to tackle them individually and have them ratified as they reach maturity, and do so in a logical fashion (some sort of "core", then forms, then scripting, etc)
* "Void elements in HTML (the new name for empty elements) do not require a trailing slash...However, due to the widespread attempts to use XHTML 1.0, there are a significant number of pages using the trailing slash"--yet ANOTHER wrong recommendation and faulty reasoning. Lazy HTML authors are annoyed by the slash, but it's been part of XHTML for years so there are a lot of web documents that use it, so HTML5 parsers will have to continue to parse tag soup and do the "guess if there's a closing t
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The erosion of society (Score:5, Funny)
This will clearly have a negative effect on society. When the script kiddies can't "haxxor" anymore, the only alternative is DRUGS! AND DRUGS ARE EVIL!! CRIME WILL SKYROCKET!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the browser's fault not the HTML standards fault. And it will never go away unless all of them do away with it at once? Why, because then little Johnny, who messes up a website and only tests it in IE (for example) will see that it works for IE, not FF, not unders
Hmph (Score:3, Funny)
*waits for 5: Awesome at putting words in bold*
WYSI... (Score:4, Funny)
Hell no! (Score:5, Funny)
-mcgrew
Why not just... (Score:5, Interesting)
Without breaking Slashdot tradition and reading TFA, why not:
Market forces screwed up HTML (Score:4, Insightful)
Netscape and then Microsoft added custom HTML.
At this point, the browser became written to execute bad code well...
Now we've got cross-browser headaches and standards confusion.
I say bring on HTML 5, and bring on the strict. Make it look good in both browsers. End the sheer boredom of trying to make code display well on FireFox and IE, both of which are bloated pieces of crap, when it works just fine in Opera.
Simplify, and abstract, but don't expect HTML coders to be coders... it's a language for layout for the rest of us, and its genius has always been its simplicity and adaptability.
Ain't broken (Score:3, Insightful)
I love how the first sentence is:
O RLY? HTML is probably the most widely deployed document format in the entire history of computing (after ASCII plaintext, which I'm not sure counts as a "format"). An unknowably huge number of documents are authored in it every day. All but a tiny fraction are successfully retrieved and rendered by millions of clients ranging from dual-core desktop PCs to mobile phones.
It's one thing to say "HTML is ugly" (to which I'd agree) or "HTML needs extending" (I'd agree with that too) but "HTML needs fixing"? Really? Is there anybody in the planet who wants to publish something online today but can't because of problems with HTML?
Why do Yahoo developers think they know it all? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yet the Yahoo developers keep on trying to tell the rest of the world how to create web sites, or how HTML should look, etc.
The Yahoo developers should first build credibility by getting their own house in order before they try to instruct others how to do their job.
security; xml (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm baffled by the concept of advocating a new version of html to get rid of security problems. Web browsers aren't going to break compatibility with old versions of html. What good does it do you if your browser supports secure html, but also supports insecure html? The vast majority of the security problems on the web are problems that are specific to IE+Win, because Windows's security model has problems, and security has never been a priority for the IE maintainers. None of that is going to change if you just invent a new version of html. Also, many of the security problems in IE+Win have historically been because of proprietary extensions that MS introduced. If MS shoots itself in the foot by not following standards, then I don't see how a new standard is going to help.
Another problem with the proposal is that it's a dead end when it comes to new functionality like SVG and MathML. These are xml-based standards, and there is no standards-based way to implement them in html; they have to be implemented in xhtml, or else they have to be implemented in a nonstandard way. Today, if you want to write a web page with mathml in it, and you want it to degrade in a sensible way in versions of IE that don't have the relevant plugin (i.e., 85% of all browsers out there), the choices aren't pretty; basically you either have to serve up multiple versions of your page, or you have to do incredibly kludgy tricks with xslt, or you have to do incredibly complicated stuff with javascript. The fundamental problem is that html has forked into html and xhtml, IE doesn't support application/xhtml+xml and probably never will, and xhtml is the only sensible way to incorporate new technology like SVG and MathML.
Hell No (Score:3, Insightful)
Trying to turn HTML into an application delivery format is a brain-dead idea from the get go. Here's a thought: let's use HTML as a document and hypermedia format, and turn to application specific protocols for delivering applications?
HTML is DEAD (Score:3, Insightful)
...or at least will play a much less significant role in the future.
As a document format, HTML is great... for example, I throw in a few tags in this forum to create bold, italics, links [slashdot.org], etc. Throw in tables and images an you can create a very nice looking article for the web.
However, there is a huge difference between "documents" which can be read in various different monitor/browser sizes, fonts, and languages and what a majority of paid developers do with HTML within corporations. That being creating pixel perfect applications that work in one particular browser (IE or Firefox).
To that end, what we need isn't yet another HTML specification which will make the browsers even that much more bloated and incompatible with each other... it is an application framework for the web. In fact, this is what Adobe and Microsoft are creating with Flex/AIR and Silverlight, respectively. Ultimately, the "markup language" of the future will be dynamically created and compiled on the server and sent to the browser in a binary format which is run by a plug-in.
Therefore, I believe HTML should evolve into what is started out as... a DOCUMENT format. It should really move towards a light-weight Open Document [wikipedia.org] specification, NOT towards something that attempts to embody "Web 2.0" features which are already evolving well beyond dated HTML specifications that are nearly a decade old.
Umm, JSON inventor? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
There is probably some irony in the fact that inter-document communications [whatwg.org] feature in HTML 5 would allow him to implement his "module" concept in an HTML 5 compliant browser. In fact, the HTML 5 proposal is actually superior to his "module" proposal in the method it uses to receive messages. Rather than polling for a JSON packet (which could be costly in both processor time and responsiveness), the HTML 5 solution adapts the existing DOM 2 event model to make the messa
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm telling you, enforce this as a standard and the internets will be perfect...
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Informative)
I think it's kind of self-defeating. On one hand he advocates custom-tag creation, then he advocates elements by tag selector. Encouraging one or the other is fine. But offering both will only confuse developers and undermine both options. Going with custom tags is probably the better solution as it encapsulates the semantic information a programmer would be looking for while still being unique enough to style with CSS.
That being said, if you really want that feature try this script:
http://simonwillison.net/2003/Mar/25/getElementsBySelector/ [simonwillison.net]
I think you want to read the DOM Level 2 Style Specification [w3.org]. The short answer is: Yes, the CSS is accessible through DOM APIs. The long answer involves lots of shouting and complaining about Microsoft and their stranglehold on the market.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's called NeWS [wikipedia.org], and it's quite old. As you can see, What's Old is NeWS Again [intelligentblogger.com].