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HTML 5.2 Recommendation

w3.org

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Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#101

Post by domenicd »

geofft wrote: post #44
magnat wrote: post #14

What's the point of removing features such as "menu" from HTML standard? If there are browsers supporting it and webpages using it, would Mozilla (or Google or Microsoft) actually remove those features just because newest standard said so? I mean: marquee was deprecated long ago, yet browsers still render it correctly.

got removed from browsers, which I personally find kind of sad because that's what I learned in 1995 and I've written a web page that uses it. But it's weird and does nothing that a normal form couldn't do, so the browsers seem to want to deprecate it.

The biggest weirdness about it was that it was essentially a parser macro, not an element. That is, at parse time, it expanded into a form/label/hr/input set of elements into the token stream. Super-bizzare. See the removal patch at https://github.com/whatwg/html/commit/5c44abc734eb483f9a7ec7....

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#102

Post by domenicd »

masswerk wrote: post #60

Hm – I'm not too happy to see most of the original HTML-elements marked "not conforming" and "must not be used", thus preparing for browsers to eventually drop the support. There are still lots of web-sites and valuable information stored and archived in this format. Back in the day, it was thought that basic HTML was a format to last. Who is going to update these documents in order to make them conforming to future…

I don't really know what process the W3C fork of our work uses for removal, if any, but you can learn more about how features get removed in the (WHATWG) HTML Standard per our working mode:

- https://whatwg.org/working-mode#removals

- https://whatwg.org/faq#removing-bad-ideas

In short, I think it's important to distinguish between conformance and removal from browsers. Removal from browsers is a big deal and, as per those links, is only done when it's not going to break the web, or when the benefits are very high (e.g. security issues). Removal from being conformant just reflects the evolution of best practices. See also https://github.com/whatwg/html/blob/master/FAQ.md#how-are-de...

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#103

Post by _nalply »

This specification should be read like all other specifications. First, it should be read cover-to-cover, multiple times. Then, it should be read backwards at least once. Then it should be read by picking random sections from the contents list and following all the cross-references.

Ah, hyperbole. I didn't know that humor could be specified.

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#104

Post by frik »

masswerk wrote: post #60

Hm – I'm not too happy to see most of the original HTML-elements marked "not conforming" and "must not be used", thus preparing for browsers to eventually drop the support. There are still lots of web-sites and valuable information stored and archived in this format. Back in the day, it was thought that basic HTML was a format to last. Who is going to update these documents in order to make them conforming to future…

What's wrong with W3C again? Are we on the same train we were with the ill-fated XHTML 1 strict and XHTML 2.

Anyway what's going on anyway with Google+Microsoft+Apple+W3C, why is there such a big push to HTTPS and HTTP/2, and declaring old HTTP/0.9 and HTTP/1 and HTTPS/1 and HTML5.0 as legacy!? And why is Mail still sent in plain text completely insecure, and no adoption hype to support SMIME/etc? It is beyond fishy. Or is it just pure greed, no one cares about non-walled-garden-open-web (aka everything has to live in LinkedIn/FB/AppStore/PWA) and there is no money in mail?

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#106

Post by Karunamon »

collinmanderson wrote: post #96
exikyut wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the current manglement isn't explicitly malicious, but this is an atrocious state of affairs. Practically speaking, the Web is a consortium of corporate foghorns that also happen to collectively be the majority ad-hoc directors of new media (translation: agendas with finance). Cable and daytime TV was the old media, which of course still exists, and social media has become a juggernaut majority of its own besi…

At this point both W3C and WHATWG are not where innovation on the web is (or should be) happening. It's up to the individual browser makers to innovate. W3C and WHATWG's job should be to document any consensus among browser makers. It shouldn't be their job to decide how browsers should work, that's the browser makers' decision. (Which happens to be large corporations, for the most part.)

That just gets the browser makers castigated by the tech community. Every time, say.. Google, intents something new, the entirely predictable incoherent screaming starts about how it's another Microsoft IE/ActiveX.

Nevermind the fact that the landscape has changed to the point where that isn't a realistic outcome anymore.

Nevermind the fact that in the instance I'm describing (which was something like WebASM or WebSockets.. it was WebSomething and I can't recall the name), they had submitted their proposals to the standardization groups, with no change on the volume of the noises.

I wish people would decide whether they want browser makers trying New Stuff or they want New Stuff coming from standards bodies only. There are upsides and downsides to either way, but I really don't beleive that BMing browser makers whenever they try New Stuff is even sort of constructive.

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#107

Post by duskwuff »

frik wrote: post #104
masswerk wrote: post #60

Hm – I'm not too happy to see most of the original HTML-elements marked "not conforming" and "must not be used", thus preparing for browsers to eventually drop the support. There are still lots of web-sites and valuable information stored and archived in this format. Back in the day, it was thought that basic HTML was a format to last. Who is going to update these documents in order to make them conforming to future…

What's wrong with W3C again? Are we on the same train we were with the ill-fated XHTML 1 strict and XHTML 2. Anyway what's going on anyway with Google+Microsoft+Apple+W3C, why is there such a big push to HTTPS and HTTP/2, and declaring old HTTP/0.9 and HTTP/1 and HTTPS/1 and HTML5.0 as legacy!? And why is Mail still sent in plain text completely insecure, and no adoption hype to support SMIME/etc? It is beyond fishy.…

This W3C recommendation is essentially meaningless. The W3C's "HTML 5.x" specifications have never been considered normative by browsers.

The actual HTML specification which browsers follow is maintained by WHATWG at:

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#108

Post by at-fates-hands »

collinmanderson wrote: post #96
exikyut wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know the current manglement isn't explicitly malicious, but this is an atrocious state of affairs. Practically speaking, the Web is a consortium of corporate foghorns that also happen to collectively be the majority ad-hoc directors of new media (translation: agendas with finance). Cable and daytime TV was the old media, which of course still exists, and social media has become a juggernaut majority of its own besi…

At this point both W3C and WHATWG are not where innovation on the web is (or should be) happening. It's up to the individual browser makers to innovate. W3C and WHATWG's job should be to document any consensus among browser makers. It shouldn't be their job to decide how browsers should work, that's the browser makers' decision. (Which happens to be large corporations, for the most part.)

> It's up to the individual browser makers to innovate.

This seems to make the most sense because the browser is the end product by which people consume their internet.

It seems to me, they have been and always will be years ahead of the governing bodies that make these part of their "standards" decisions. By the time something finally makes into the spec, we're already onto a dozen new things the browsers are capable of and implementing.

At this point it just feels like the spec is an afterthought, not necessarily keeping up with how fast the industry is changing.

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#109

Post by duskwuff »

Bahamut wrote: post #97
masswerk wrote: post #60

Hm – I'm not too happy to see most of the original HTML-elements marked "not conforming" and "must not be used", thus preparing for browsers to eventually drop the support. There are still lots of web-sites and valuable information stored and archived in this format. Back in the day, it was thought that basic HTML was a format to last. Who is going to update these documents in order to make them conforming to future…

Doesn't this have negative ramifications for email too?

Not really. HTML rendering by email clients has never been especially standards-conformant; the publication of a new HTML standard (especially by W3C, as mentioned elsewhere) isn't likely to affect that.

Re: HTML 5.2 Recommendation

#110

Post by ocdtrekkie »

reificator wrote: post #91
masswerk wrote: post #60

Hm – I'm not too happy to see most of the original HTML-elements marked "not conforming" and "must not be used", thus preparing for browsers to eventually drop the support. There are still lots of web-sites and valuable information stored and archived in this format. Back in the day, it was thought that basic HTML was a format to last. Who is going to update these documents in order to make them conforming to future…

is no longer supported by browsers, but with a few css declarations it works just fine. Removing support for presentational markup does not mean a loss of information. Browsers will still render tags they don't recognize, and re-applying the styling of those tags is often trivial. (I mention because it's one of the more difficult, but not terribly so) As the web evolved, our needs changed. Do we still need the tag?

I unapologetically still use the font tag, because most of the time I have no desire to bother with CSS.
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