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Much of what I wanted to discuss was discussed rather elegantly within a post from August 2009 (http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-August/021725.html) on this mailing list, but I would like to take it a step further. Henri Sivonen made some very valid points within that post, and I agree with most of what he said.<BR>
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I also wrote an open letter to the WHATWG on the HTMLCenter blog (http://www.htmlcenter.com/blog/an-open-letter-to-whatwg/) laying out some of my thoughts. I would like to use this message to build upon what I wrote in that blog post, but I don't really want to rehash what I've already said.<BR>
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My main concerns about the current version of the HTML5 specs were laid out pretty well by Henri in the mailing list message from August 2009 I linked above. However, I wanted to reiterate the ones that concern me and add my thoughts.
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<LI TYPE=1 VALUE=1>Unquoted attributes
<LI TYPE=1 VALUE=2>Implied tags (such as leaving out a closing paragraph tag)
<LI TYPE=1 VALUE=3>Inconsistent use of the closing slash on empty elements
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My concern with all three of these points is that they are relying on the browser to interpret the coder's intent when rendering the elements. The unquoted attributes and implied tags are subject to wide interpretation by the browsers. Regarding the unquoted attributes, I fear that new coders might not understand when and why attributes should be quoted and will spend a lot of time wondering why their pages are not rendering properly. For instance, imagine a new coder trying to declare inline style definitions without quoting the style attributes. How will a browser interpret something like:<BR>
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<p style=width: 500px; height: 100px;><BR>
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It becomes even more dangerous in that height and width are actually attributes of most HTML elements, so the browser will have to do quite a bit of work to figure out what to do with these types of definitions.<BR>
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The implied tags can be just as frightening. For instance (and I realize this is not the best example, but it's the one I can think of at the moment), what happens with the following:<BR>
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HTML Version:<BR>
<p>This is some paragraph text.<BR>
<span>This is some more text</span><BR>
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XHTML Version:<BR>
<p>This is some paragraph text.</p><BR>
<span>This is some more text.</span><BR>
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In the XHTML version above, it's obvious that the span will be separated from the paragraph text. However, in the HTML version, browsers will include the span in the paragraph (unless appropriate CSS is applied to the span).<BR>
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I would like to reiterate that I am not asking the WHATWG to recommend browsers dropping support for any older HTML specs (in fact, I am very much in support of the browsers continuing to support all older HTML specs and, to the best of their ability, supporting HTML from before there were specs and recommendations).<BR>
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However, what I am asking is that the WHATWG consider writing the specs so that those older, less rigid styles of coding do not validate according to the standard. Coders will still be free to write the code with implied closing tags, unquoted attributes and inconsistent use of the closing slash, but I don't believe that type of code should validate, as it does not conform to an actual standard, rather it conforms to exceptions to standards.<BR>
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In my blog post, I likened the looser standards of HTML5 to removing laws against driving while intoxicated. Sure, abolishing those laws would not force anyone to drive drunk, but without any legal ramifications for doing so, it would be much more prevalent. As with that example, if the standards for HTML are loosened as compared to XHTML 1 (served as text/html), coders will not feel the need to code neatly or consistently, and we will begin to slip back into the spaghetti code we experienced throughout the 1990s.<BR>
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I appreciate you taking the time to read this message, and I hope I can have at least a little bit of an impact on the formation of these standards. Thank you.<BR>
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Curtiss Grymala<BR>
<A HREF="mailto:curtiss@ten-321.com">curtiss@ten-321.com</A>
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