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- Published on December 4th 2007
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2007 / December 4th/ HTML5 and CSS3 are doomed for disaster
Throw around phrases like Future of Web Design and you’ll get lots of thoughts regarding conferences, HTML5, and CSS3. If you’re a developer-developer, you probably believe these are the technologies that are going to be the future, and rightfully so. Real column support, local storage, and more semantic goodness than you could put on a Christmas Tree. But if you’re a real-world-developer, you should quickly realize these technologies were doomed from their inception. They will never become the language of the web.
Browser Adoption is s..l..o..w
We need to remember the most prominent browser in our market is IE6. A browser released in 2001. When we break down the facts, the majority of people surfing the web are using a rendering engine that does not support CSS2 or XHTML 1 (with an xml content type).
The language of the semantic web is primarily HTML 4 (released in 1997), and very little XHTML 1.0 (released in 2000). Keep in mind XHTML 1.0 is backwards-compatible with HTML 4. A <div /> is still a <div />, you just have more rules in XHTML 1. For the most part, browsers interpret XHTML 1 and HTML 4 documents identically. HTML5 is not backwards compatable — there is no HTML 4 or XHTML 1 equivelent of a <section />.
As for CSS, we still don’t have full support for the CSS 2 specification (released in 1998) among the majority of people browsing the web. The most prominent browser on the market (Internet Explorer 6), puts a shame to the word “support” for CSS 2.
Recap: It’s 2008. We still don’t have full support for specifications released in 1998 and 2000, and the vast majority of the web is still running on specs released in 1997. How long do you expect it will take browsers to adopt a technology once it’s finalized? 10 years? 20 years? I don’t honestly know — what I do know is that the web moves at a pace much faster than browser manufacturers can keep up with.
Other technologies are simply a better option
Let’s look at another technology for deploying web content: the Adobe Flash player. Flash player 1 was released in 1996 and has undergone 9 major iterations with the most recent (Flash Player 9) released in 2006. The Flash Player 9 has been downloaded over 3.2 billion times. It’s penetration is above 99% in mature markets. What W3C specification can boust a 99% penetration rate on consumer machines less than two years after the specification’s finalization?
The current flash player has support for semantic data structure (powered by XML), separation of style from content & behavior, and even things like local storage and streaming video. In almost every arena — Flash player beats out HTML/CSS. It’s technically more advanced and more ubiquitous.
HTML5 and CSS3 aren’t a complete loss
Ironically, one of the areas HTML5 and CSS3 have the highest potential is from within the Flash Player in the form of AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime). AIR is currently supports Webkit (the same engine used by Safari and the iPhone) and will render HTML and CSS. With Webkit leading the market in adopting W3C specifications (some of CSS3 and HTML5 is in the current Webkit build) — it’s only a matter of time until they get ported over to AIR.
And then there’s that 6-letter word: iPhone. The fact that the iPhone is powered by Webkit makes a huge difference. There are hundreds of iPhone specific websites out there — and all of them know that they’re getting iPhone. An iPhone running WebKit. Apple has the power to implement specifics of HTML5 & CSS3 and push it out to all iPhone users through iTunes. I predict in the near future, we’ll be able to start using these specifications for iPhone websites.
Wrap up
I really want to believe that the W3C is on our side — and that they’re working with the community instead of preaching to it — but I just can’t see it. The past decade has taught us that simply throwing specs into browser developer’s hands isn’t enough to get them onto people’s machines in a functioning form.
What’s your thoughts on HTML5 and CSS3? Do you really believe that they have a chance at becoming supported? Or do you just want them to become supported?
Me? I’ll be sitting in the corner dabbling with the Flash, Flex, Cocoa, WPF and the future of the web that’s here today. No need to wait.
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December 4th | #
Today I read the A List Apart article on this very subject: a preview of what’s to come in HTML 5. My reaction was, “Huh? This is it? This is what we’re all waiting for?”
Of course, I dig the new audio and video elements, which greatly simplify required code, but as you’ve stated, it will be a very long time before these elements are widely supported.
The positive for me, as likely for you, is that Flex continues to improve and mature at a very rapid rate. Flex is supported right now, rather than way later. Plus, there’s no shortage of Flex gigs to pick up for those of operating on our own. That makes me even happier!
December 5th | #
“What W3C specification can boust a 99% penetration rate on consumer machines less than two years after the specification’s finalization?”
The W3C Specification is not a software. In the paragraph above, you are talking about a product defined by one company sole designer of its technical specifications with no need of interoperability.
Your question would be more interesting in terms of…
How much of Flash, Flex, Cocoa, WPF implementations is interoperable? I think we can safely answer almost none.
The goal of HTML and the fact that I can read your weblog now is whatever my platform of choice and my browser of choice, I can have a satisfying interaction with your content, reading and for example leaving a comment.
The browser implementers (Access, Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla, Opera, etc.) are part of the working group and for most of them are in fact implementing the technology in development. You can also join the W3C HTML WG if you think there are missing things in the document. That’s one of the benefits to have the work done publicly. You can voice your comments and participate.
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/#join
December 5th | #
That’s a pretty short-sighted view. The major advantage of HTML/CSS over Flash/Flex is that they are open standards; leaving the future of the web in the hands of one company is what led to the stagnation of IE6 in the first place.
Webkit, Opera and Firefox have already begun to implement aspects of HTML 5 and CSS 3; I have a strong feeling that IE.Next will also, considering Microsoft’s position on the working groups.
One of the bigger drawbacks with Flash - other than it being proprietary, closed technology - is that it is difficult to learn and requires expensive software to create. With HTML & CSS you just need a notepad.
Yes, it’s frustrating seeing the slow pace that HTML & CSS development seems to move at; but in order to keep the web free, open and available to everyone, it’s the best option.
December 5th | #
I’ve been thinking the very same thing. And I’m on the HTML5 WG.
Will I use HTML5 even when it becomes available? No. No I will not, because it won’t work for most people unless you completely ignore the added elements and attributes when authoring. And It’s financial suicide to build a website twice, once in HTML4 and once in HTML5 - how do you explain the benefits to a client? In fact, what ARE the benefits of HTML5 to a client? Until there are web services and browsers that can do something additional with HTML5 - there are no advantages beyond intellectual huzzahs and a new buzzword to ‘bring to market’. XHTML is a stable and backward compatible platform. It, and HTML4, will be around for decades.
CSS3 is a little different. I think much of it will get adopted, but only because it is effectively ‘progressive enhancement’ rather than a complete re-write. Browsers that support it get prettier sites, but that’s all. The fancy new selectors won’t get used until there’s ubiquitous browser support for them. Which seems like it will be many years away (IE.next …)
What browsers need is a complete re-think of how they work. What makes Flash so consistent is the fact that the flash interpreter is identical on all browsers, and is automatically upgraded when a new release is made. Browsers need to do the same - but without having to wait for the browser software author to write their own interpretation of the newest HTML/CSS revision. Browsers need to make HTML and CSS plugins. Plugins that are authored by the W3C itself. In that way, you get all the benefits of how Flash is distributed, but without ‘going corporate’.
Flash itself is something I have little interest in seeing adopted for the web as a whole. It has its (essential) place, for sure, but rendering text and images is not that place.
As it is, with browser’s designed the way they are, and with the industry being at the mercy of Microsofts release schedule - HTML5 is going to be still-born, and CSS3 is going to take years to become supported on enough browsers to be a viable choice for advanced layout and presentation.
When the browsers get smarter is when we can move away from HTML4. It’s a long long way off yet. I feel quite confident in saying that ten years from now most of the web will still be HTML4 and XHTML served with a HTML (rather than XML) MIMEtype.
December 5th | #
I should add that it’s not just the release schedule, but the fact that old browsers like IE6 are simply refusing to die even when new ones are released.
December 5th | #
Computers are renewed after 2-6 years aprox. and there’re people that uses a 10-15 years old computer, but they probably are not running Windows. The range of people that buy a new one is having WINDOWS so the main problem is that computer sellers must be installing ONLY Ubuntu and OS Software for the big mass, instead of M$ software that rises the PC’s prices and leave Windows for those that want to have THAT system to their boring workplaces…
Linux it’s not big deal for 30+ old people, they don’t need a PC to play, but Windows still keep that hook, so every kid wants a PC with Windows. I’ve been updating a computer for games, and you’ll agree with me that it’s a total waste of money. If I had so much time to play I should buy a XBOX maybe?
So, the propietary OS M$ Windows is the bad guy, and until M$ lose the market, we we’ll be having IE6 for years. I don’t say that if Apple were done the same thing, we’d be still shaming Mac OS X for the damages, but Jobs doesn’t have that perception so we’re safe.
December 5th | #
HTML5 and CSS3 are probably a ways off from now but there has been a heightened interest in moving web technology forward over the past 2 years that hasn’t been seen in some time. The W3C probably won’t recommend the mark up languages in the next week or two but I predict they will be available within a year to two years.
Flash is very quickly losing ground because of it’s high load times, its lack of accessibility and a general distaste for flash amongst developers. I can’t see flash being a viable solution (or even replacement) for HTML and CSS anytime in the near future. It is much more likely for new W3C recommendations then flash magically becoming accessible and developers everywhere jumping on board. Flash won’t be accessible for the same reasons that browsers are taking so long to adopt new CSS and HTML.
December 5th | #
While I agree that browser adoption is criminally slow, I don’t think this means new technologies are doomed from their onset. We do have better support for CSS than we did 10 years ago.
What we can hope for is incremental advances at best, but I’ll take that over nothing any day. We’re on our way there with Firefox and Safari (and probably Opera too) already supporting a lot of CSS3 functionality. The real issue is graceful degradation, because any developer worth their salt is going to make their sites functional for at the very least one previous browser generation. This means we won’t even be close to using this stuff until we see IE8, and Firefox 4.
Now HTML5, that’s a whole other debate, because I’m part of the camp that would prefer to continue with XHTML.
December 5th | #
Kyle, my thoughts almost exactly. I find it completely absurd that browser vendors can’t keep up with the W3C Specs, considering they only come out once every 10 years.
Having read the ALA article on HTML 5 I’m completely disappointed in the new version. My ideal Spec for HTML 5 would be to just use XHTML 1.1. And drop all the ‘transitional’, ’strict’ & ‘frameset’ malarky. I don’t care about any of the new features. And the lack of backwards compatibility is down right stupid. I’ve no problem with class=”whatever”. The audio/video tags are stupid. Why not just extend the object tag. HTML5 is clearly geared towards the blog style sites and has no value what so ever to portfolio/promotional sites.
CSS3 is more interesting though. Having heard Jina Bolton talk about CSS3 at FOWD NYC there seems to be a lot of interesting work coming out of that.
I think we’ll be using html4 for another 10 years anyway. I’m jumping in the Flash boat. I don’t care if it’s proprietary software. It works. Version 9 is wonderful. And the project doesn’t generally look like a ‘premium’ wordpress theme that everyone seems to be buying into these days.
Just because
@Luis and everyone sorta kinda defending IE6. If you release a new version of the browser, why not simply do it in an update and remove the old one from the system? Apple do that. MS used to do that. All the other browsers I use (Firefox, Opera, Flock) do it.
It’s also stupid to not want to use flash because it’s proprietary. Do you just build HTML/CSS sites? Chances are you’re using some company owned code somewhere.
December 5th | #
I share your sentiments about HTML5, but still think that CSS3 is viable. At least it won’t be a complete departure from past versions of CSS.
December 5th | #
The problem with doing an automated update from IE6 to IE7 is that for years many developers settled on using IE6 as default, without coding to standards and checking in other browsers. As a result there are an awful lot of websites, intranets and applications that are badly coded and would just break in IE7. If you think Microsoft get a lot of stick now, imagine what it would be like if their userbase suddenly found ‘the internet was broken’ when they switched it on one day.
Like it or not - and I don’t - they have to protect their legacy customers. As developers, we can make sure we code to standards and spread the word about alternatives, but we must remain aware that we are in the minority of internet users.
Now imagine a situation like that happening again; Flash/AIR ‘wins’, there is no strong competition and as a result no incentive to innovate or to follow standards.
The web needs competition, and it needs open standards.
December 5th | #
[...] i basically yawned. It was hard to explain why, until i read Warpspire’s post entitled “HTML5 and CSS3 are doomed for disaster“. While it’s a little TOO negative in some spots, and I still unsure about the points [...]
December 5th | #
I enjoy using both Flash and HTML/CSS, but to say that we should switch completely to one or the other seems absurd. I’m not fully behind HTML5, I do feel as though rich media is done better by Flash at this point, and it’s my tool of choice, but this sounds more like the Flash developers excuse “It looks the same on all browsers, and that’s why I program using Flash.”
The negates the fluidity of the web, something more than one person has talked about embracing, instead of constantly fighting it. The web should be open, knowledge should be free, I should be able to use a plethora of devices to access the web. Just because the open standards have issues now (and probably always will), does not mean there is no hope for tomorrow. At this point it does mainly seem that IE is the problem (as always) while all the other players are keeping up pace much better than ever before.
Some of my best friends are Flash developers, and I admire them for it, but I would never suggest that we stop growing open standards, developing new open technologies, just because browser vendors (specifically IE) are slower to implement.
December 5th | #
@karl: I realize a specification is a long shot from software, however for the working developer the implementation is of little concern. I care far more about the end-user implementation and what works on their machine. In those respects, Cocoa applications, Flash applications, and HTML documents are one in the same.
I think a big short-sight of these arguments is that companies like Apple (cocoa), Adobe (flash), and Microsoft (WPF), still work in the public view, often giving insight into development tracks, as well as scooping up leading developers of their technologies to work on the technology itself. They may not be open standards, but they are most certainly open development cycles.
@Peter: Actually, the Flex 2 SDK is available freely, and the Flex 3 SDK will be open sourced. You can build Flex 2 applications at no cost, or you can purchase Flex Builder for a couple hundred dollars (I would hardly call this expensive). As for learning curve? Well, you’ll run into that with whatever front end technology you chose.
@Dustin: I won’t go into specifics, but you are clearly not on the developer pulse, nor have you been following Flash over the past couple of years. Flash is more popular than ever before, and most certainly accessible.
December 5th | #
@Andrew: I hardly said I was abandoning HTML/CSS all together. In fact, no where did I come close to that. HTML/CSS as it exists today will continue to be a HUGE player in the web. However, I don’t see it changing that much in its implementation.
December 5th | #
“Do you really believe that they have a chance at becoming supported?”
Of course they’ll be supported, HTML 5 specifically was started by the browser makers themselves! Why would they spend all this time and effort coming up with these ideas and then NOT implement them? It was XHTML2 that was considered unrealistic by most implementers, which is why it didn’t go anywhere and an alternative was proposed.
CSS3 too is being implemented bit by bit, and I see no reason why we won’t see near-full support for it within the next 10 years. In fact, I recently wrote this article, which spurred from my impression that experimental builds of Safari, Opera and Firefox indicate that Flash is destined to be replaced by web standards.
December 5th | #
The language of the semantic web (as usually defined) is not HTML 4; it’s RDF and OWL.
XHTML 1.0 is not “backwards-compatible with HTML 4”, except in the mundane sense that it’s an exact XML equivalent of HTML 4.
It’s not 2008; it’s 2007.
Browsers are not waiting to implement HTML 5 until it’s finalized; they’re implementing most of it already.
Flash Player 9 doesn’t have “over 99% penetration in mature markets”, even going by the figures you linked to, which claim 93.3%.
The link from the Flash Player to AIR to WebKit to the iPhone is misleading, since one of iPhone Safari’s notable characteristics is that it doesn’t support Flash.
And finally, the past decade has not “taught us that simply throwing specs into browser developer’s hands isn’t enough to get them onto people’s machines in a functioning form”, because we didn’t think that to begin with.
I think your most accurate statement in this article is “I don’t honestly know”. If you want to make an argument that HTML 5 and CSS 3 are doomed, that would be very interesting, but you’ll need to have a closer grasp of the facts.
December 5th | #
Well @mpt, it’s clear you spent your time arguing semantics rather than the point at hand. I suppose I should have spent more time writing things like 2007.93, rather than thinking about logical arguments. More power to you.
December 5th | #
It’s simple, HTML5 and CSS3 offer great potential but it will take time to be adopted.. probably a lot of time.
Why are people still on the “Flash isn’t accessible” ideology.. it was interesting in 2005-06, but now it is just old. It’s simple, Flash isn’t the problem, the developer is the problem.
I hope to see all of these technologies advance on, but only time will tell what is a viable development path.
December 6th | #
[...] CSS, CSS3, HTML, HTML5 Kyle Neath makes some good points about the future of HTML5 and CSS3. While CSS3 might work quite well, the missing backwards compatibility of HTML5 looks like a real [...]
December 6th | #
[...] an interesting post on warpspire.com at the moment, decrying the speed of implementation for HTML 5 and CSS 3 and suggesting Flash/AIR [...]
December 7th | #
It’s-already-too-late-but-here-are-some-anyways suggestions for HTML5:
new attribute for table tags: type=”data” or type=”layout” - Well there you go. It’s semantic enough, backward-compatible, easy to add to screen reader software, really requires no changes on the part of visual browsers (they can just ignore it).
a way of preventing incomplete, flawed, and intentionally bizarre implementations (IE, we’re ALL looking at you)
CSS3 needs:
defined defaults for margin and padding on all elements (usually zero, except maybe forms)
a great way to style borders/corners (i.e., provide one image for border and one for corner and the browser will automatically rotate/tile it appropriately around your entire element. optional different borders/corners for different sides (left/right/top/bottom) so you can add a shadow on the bottom and right or whatever).
a way of preventing incomplete, flawed, and intentionally bizarre implementations (IE, we’re ALL looking at you)
better way to handle situations that are currently solved with float.
required full support for alpha channel in PNG
….I think that’s about it. I was totally excited about h and section tags and all that junk before, but it’s such a waste of time when these 7 things would cut most web projects’ time requirements in half.
December 8th | #
[...] HTML5 and CSS3 are doomed for disaster - Warpspire erdekes gondolatok a css3-rol es a html5-rol. (tags: css html webdesign w3c html5 warspire css3) [...]
December 10th | #
[...] agli stripes , ai bottoni glossy ed all’effetto riflesso.. niente affatto scontanto quest’altro sulla prossima diffusione di HTML5 e CSS3 che secondo le previsioni faticherà a decollare in [...]
December 11th | #
Yeah, that’s great, except that Flash and Flex are not open standards, and they aren’t properly indexable. They’re also fairly bloated, and annoying to deploy. We need ECSMA script 3 or whatever it is - something that ties the browsers in with flash-like behaviour. Maybe then we can have a nice common way of defining interfaces and how they behave.
Image if we could build an interface once in interface builder on the mac, and then export it to a web compatible form… that’d be nice.
December 11th | #
random8r: Please, I do not encourage misinformation on my blog. If you are going to make arguments, please make sure your facts are straight.
ActionScript 3 (that’s the scripting engine in Flash/Flex) is compliant with ECMAScript 3. Javascript has shown no interest in moving towards the fully object-oriented solution that ECMAScript 3 is — so hoping is mostly useless.
Properly indexable? My ass. Proper flash sites read HTML files as xml files for content. Not to mention .swf’s can be indexed by Google just fine.
Flex is a common way of defining interfaces and how they behave. It’s the same declaritive XML syntax coupled with a scripting language that WPF uses, and pretty much every other respectable RIA framework out there.
You can build an interface in Flex Build on a mac, export it to a web compatible form (swf), and it looks consistent across all platforms. Today.
Please, if you have issues with Flash — that’s fine. There’s tons of points to pick on (I have a full laundry list myself), but please stop spewing opinions and claiming them as facts.
My comparison of Flash was to show how fast the web is moving — a pace at which browser manufacturers simply can’t keep up. Sites like YouTube and ScrapBlog have exemplified how browser manufacturers can’t keep up, while Flash can. Is Flash the end-all-be-all solution? Of course not — but it’s clearly showing browser inefficiencies, and that is the basis for my argument.
December 13th | #
On the sites I run, IE7 page views surpassed IE6 page views - just in the past month. Support of W3C standards was greatly improved from IE6 to IE7.
W3C standards support is even better in Firefox, Safari, and Opera - and usage share of all three of these browsers has increased, according to statistics on my sites, in the past year. Further, all three of these browsers will be releasing new versions in the next year, which will further increase standards support, and will include greater SVG support (if I could have SVG, I would gladly choose it over Flash).
Microsoft has been under enormous pressure from developers to make IE8 more standards compliant, but they have been silent regarding what they plan to do with the next version of IE. There’s really no telling what they are planning on doing at this point.
December 18th | #
[...] I just read Kyle Neath’s article titled HTML5 and CSS3 are doomed for disaster. I took away a lot of information, but it kind of stated what a lot of people are thinking. Making [...]
December 19th | #
Our site stats, and our customers site stats still show that IE6 is the browser of choice out there.
As IE7 was a windows critical update (twice!) I was kind of wondering whether the fact that IE6 was being used so much was down to the amount of pirate copies of windows in use.
Just a thought.
January 12th | #
I think webdesigners should start to block ancient browsers (mainly IE6) from accessing their sites and add a message that the visitor’s browser is outdated.
I know we’ll never be allowed to do that but somehow I believe the only way to get users to upgrade their browsers is to force them.
January 13th | #
IE8 has passed the Acid2 test. I do not think either HTML5 nor CSS3 will be a total loss. Another thing is that they will force more developers to stop supporting >IE8.
January 26th | #
I can see the next wave of browsers offering stronger support for the new standards, probably IE 9+ (since 8 is almost out — I doubt MS is going to change their ways that quickly), whatever version of FF 3 comes out after what’s currently in beta, and I believe Opera already has decent native support for a lot of the current standard. Perhaps it’s just me — when HTML 4 came out I was still in high school and didn’t really care much about web development — but it seems like “standards compliance” has become a much bigger issue over the past few years. I think the major vendors are going to start to take notice a bit more in this go ’round.
As for Flash, I personally don’t agree that it’s a better alternative. It’s bulky (which is less important these days, since a developer can almost depend on broadband) and, frankly, I’m too cheap to go and shell out that much money. While you can create some impressive effects with it, it isn’t necessarily relevant for a lot of sites — if, as a client, I want a web site that’s quite simple and mostly informative, your Flash site is going to be overkill and is going to cost me a lot more than what I’m willing to spend. When I’m surfing the web, I want to get to the information quick and painlessly, and I don’t really care a whole lot about having animated menus and a soundtrack. Most of the time, when I come to a Flash website, I just turn and run. (I know I’m probably in the minority on that, but…)
What I find amusing is the concept of a “standard” that’s hardly standard. I don’t mean proprietary additions (such as IE’s annoying “blink” tag), but the fact that each browser has their own subset of features that they support. It defeats the purpose; it should be called the “W3C Suggestion”. Think about it in other realms of development — what would be the uproar if the next version of Visual C++ decided they weren’t going to support “for” loops?
January 26th | #
[...] was reading through this post at Warpspire.com (yes, that’s my comment at the very end) and started thinking about the [...]
March 24th | #
The big problem is that IE / Windows users dont ubdate their systems.
I run a larger danish retail website an by looking at the statistics of the site i can se that meany still use IE6 but most visitors use flash 9 and the rest flash 7. All versions under flash 7 only represent less than 2%.
So it’s safe to say that all IE6 users on the site uses flash 7 or 9. IE6 were released in 2001 and Flash 7 in 2004 so most IE users have updated ther flash versions but not there browsers.
I think there are 2 reasons for that:
1. Updating a browser is a greater task to the inexperienced computer user.
2. Microsoft arent as good at dristibuting updates as adobe and they are not as pushy to get pepole to update ther computers.
But over the last year i can se that MEANY of the IE6 users have updated to IE7 so i only expect a full update to take 2 more years (witch is only about 3 microsoft weeks). So before 2015 all IE versions vill be IE8 at least and perhaps a great deal will be IE9 or IE10 with hopefully will support HTML5 and CSS3.
This period can be reduced allot if microsoft gets as good at upgreating as adobe or even mozill is.
March 24th | #
HK: One of the biggest factors in the low adoption rate of IE7 is the fact that the update is only pushed to verified copies of windows — leaving out the huge portion of not-so-legal copies of Windows floating around.
Personally, I think Microsoft should push browser updates to everyone — regardless of the legal status of their copy of Windows.
May 7th | #
I think users of your so called “not-so-legal” copies of windows won’t use the IE at all..
In one point I agree with you - it will take a long time until HTML5 is widely supported, but once done it will be used on many pages. There are a lot elements really important for the new wave of web development with blogs / boards and wikis. I can imagine that also search engines will make use of the new elements to determine what a page is about..
Maybe I will publish an own article on my website in a few days.. Hope you take a look.
May 24th | #
I have a lot of sympathy for Dave’s idea. All this faffing around re-inventing everything to be more semantic is all well and good, but really, something as simple as adding a single attribute to table cells to describe whether they are for data or layout purposes combined with a simple globally appliable order attribute describing the order in which the content of various containers should be read could have saved an awful lot of developer time and effort, been extraordinarily easy for browser and screen reader developers to implement support for and been the ideal solution for probably 90 to 99% of real world sites.
It’s not that I have any problem with CSS and making X/HTML more semantic. It is the approach we should be taking and CSS does give more flexibility. But for the powers-that-be to force everyone down the more involved route and completely miss as simple a solution as a couple of additional attributes was just barking.
I say this because the web is/was primarily about making information freely accessible. Complicating the underlying markup and creating a new complimentary styling language only pushed it closer to the professional developer and further from the well meaning amateur. Which is not my idea of empowering anyone.
Thank God sites like MySpace have come to the amateurs rescue to churn out badly malformed markup for them instead of forcing these users to half-learn how to produce half-assed code themselves.
What I find particularly ironic with HTML 5 is the re-introduction of the menu container and tweaking in meaning of other once deprecated elements.
Utterly nuts!
Anyway, this might be considered a rant. Probably because it is. But hopefully it raises a point even if it’s not been ranted about particularly well.
I agree we should be moving forward. New CSS. New HTML (or preferably XHTML). Being more semantic. But alienating amateurs in the process shouldn’t have been and should never be an option.
I’ll think straight tomorrow ;-)
June 4th | #
I would have to disagree with Flash being better. Just because it’s easier to update doesn’t make it better. The fact is that Flash is owned by Adobe, a single company. Do we really want all the web to be controlled by one company? Not only that, X/HTML is meant for a completely different purpose. When HTML was made they made for the web, Flash was created to be an animation and interaction program. For some web applications Flash might come in handy, but I yet to see any reason to use Flash instead of JavaScript libraries like jQuery for animations.
Look at the downfalls of Flash:
• Massive loading times for simple documents
• Searchability is extremely low to none on most search engines. This process isn’t going to speed anymore then HTML5 support is. Not only that, CSS3 is already being widely supported by Opera, Firefox, and Safari. With IE8 coming out I think this will help even more.
• Have to use Flash to even make it. Notepad and TextEdit is free and preinstalled on Mac and Windows. Why pay hundreds to thousands to be able to create websites?!
IE8 is coming out soon and I can’t wait. I never use IE6 or 7, but IE8 will be amazing for me as a Web Developer. HTML5 will be supported and CSS3 is already almost completely supported by IE8. It’s not a loss at all.
MCory, blink tag was an Easter egg in the Netscape browser lol. You can still use it in CSS with text-decoration:blink; lol.
June 5th | #
It has been mooted many times that browsers will always lag behind strict programming languages etc; so even if the new html and css version do appear they would not be full compatible not for a while. i mean look at IE and CSS. they are only just with IE8 gonna work smoothly togather.
Its one to say we’ll see what happens.
July 4th | #
Very good points, it’s embarrasing.
I buy cheap web design books off Amazon, not realising that they’re 5 years old until I open them. This would put me off but the majority of the time the information inside applies today as much as it did years ago. Why buy a book on web standards that came out 3 months ago when it will cover the exact same principles from 3 years ago!
On the other side - FF3 has been unleashed and supposedly carries full CSS3 support. Whether IE8 will or not remains to be seen… you can never really trust Microsoft’s word.
September 16th | #
Oscar said: “IE8 is coming out soon and I can’t wait. I never use IE6 or 7, but IE8 will be amazing for me as a Web Developer. HTML5 will be supported and CSS3 is already almost completely supported by IE8. It’s not a loss at all.”
sorry, but I have to disagree here… with IE8 MS are only aiming for CSS2.1 support - there has not been ANY mention of CSS3 where as all the other ‘proper’ browsers use a lot of CSS3 already (albeit in the form of browser specific ‘hacks’ due to the CSS3 not being the current standard yet).
to be perfectly blunt MS with IE are the ones causing the delay in getting standards updated. all the other proper browsers are constantly updating their software to include updates to the standards set by the W3C. had it not been for IE i honestly believe that CSS3 would have already been the current standard!
as for flash, well… just don’t get me started. put it this way, someone has very poor eyesight so they use a screen reader to read websites to them. it cannot read anything from flash as it is not actual text - there’s one group of people you already exclude from your site. mobile users again will be excluded from your site.
at least with html and css it’s accessible to all!
November 28th | #
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=466974 < relevant bug.
January 16th | #
Are you suggesting that all websites be made in Flash? I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
BTW, yes, I have downloaded Flash, but I’ve also downloaded flashblock.
January 16th | #
Yes Keith, I’m insinuating that we ditch all HTML & CSS completely and immediately.
Thanks for reading my article.
January 23rd | #
Why does MS want to frustrate the browser development? Is it bcoz better browsers would mean the lesser dependence on windows even further?
February 22nd | #
what all browsers need to do is practically force the user to update. they need to spam every user until that 90 year old great grandmother finally updates to a current version. the average user will not update until he has to. additionally, updating needs to be more noob friendly. the popular ftp client Filezilla has mastered the process. when you open the client, a friendly message pops up saying an update is avail and you can click ok to download and install. the average computer noob will fail if he has to find the “setup.exe” on his hard drive. he will then be confused if he has to navigate through pages of options, extensions, add-ons, etc. the browsers need to have a one button click to update.