Caught In The Gears Of The HTML Standards
I’m presently working through some of the HTML5 standards along with some of the CSS3 in a website design, and I’m beginning to wish I had developed this thing in PHP. Whenever I start out on a project, I tend to just throw caution to the wind and go “<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN” “httpss://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd”>”. I do some in “HTML 4.01 Strict”, but for the most part “Transitional” is a safe bet. And they promised that “<!DOCTYPE html>” was going to be so much easier!
Even when writing in “Transitional” it can get kinda dicey, and I have a really bad habit of using deprecated code. The heartbreak in all this is that most of the deprecated code is the best of code. I’m constantly struggling with centering all types of text, buttons, boxes and images. It may be me, but I’m thinking …… hey, it might be a good idea to just code (<center>Whatever It Is That I’m Trying To Center</center>), and be done with it. However, the powers that be have other ideas! I have seen code written in a dozen different ways to center things. Now with “HTML5″, all that will change no doubt.
The real tragedy with all this is that while most browsers will generally render your code cleanly, IE doesn’t play well with others and you “generally” have to start all over again. Whether Microsoft joins in on the fun of the future is yet to be seen. Could be that they are just too concerned in playing catch-up with Apple that they do relatively little with the coding of IE to work with “HTML5″ and “CSS3″.
HTML 4.01 was originally published in late 1999 with development of “HTML5″ beginning in 2004 ( they say full specification by 2014 ( yeah right! )) some ten years after initial development in 2004) and still confusion reins. Just try an validate a site and you’ll see what I mean. Just the fact that it has taken 10 years for everyone to get on the same page shows the challenges present.
So long as everyone wants to develop the latest and greatest; having a full set of reliable specifications will be hard to come by. And with the crushing popularity of mobile and the continued use of more “PHP” within even the simplest of web designs, we may never get there!
I understand that “PHP” has just released 5.3.19 …… I wonder how that will render with the bitch’s brew of “HTML”, “CSS” and the growing list of Web Browsers? Oh Joy!
