ADOBE PageMill (fwd)

[Thomas Dowling]

>*Regarding Netscape's Center Tag*
>All lines of text between the begin and end of the <CENTER> element are
>centered between the current left and right margins.  A new element has  
>been
>introduced rather than using the proposed <P ALIGN= CENTER>  because using
><P ALIGN= CENTER > breaks many existing browsers when the <P> element is
>used as a container.  The <P ALIGN= CENTER > element is also less general
>and does not support all cases where centering may be desired.

I won't question this (except to say I thought NS's <CENTER> tag predated  
the <X ALIGN=CENTER> tags in HTML 3.0, which kinda invalidates this  
argument), but I'm curious to know what the many existing browsers are which  
break under <P ALIGN=CENTER>.  I always write paragraphs as containers, I  
have often used ALIGN=CENTER or ALIGN=RIGHT, and I've never seen anything  
break.  Lynx, X Mosaic, Windows Mosaic (multiple versions), Windows  
Netscape, Air Mosaic, Arena, OmniWeb, and probably a few others I'm  
forgetting all either correctly center the paragraph or successfully ignore  
the align instruction (also correct behavior if they don't recognize it).

I consider myself to be something of an HTML purist, but I don't see the  
<CENTER> tag going away.  However, if I tell an authoring tool what brand  
HTML I'm writing (2.0, 3.0, NHTML, MSIE extensions, whatever), it has no  
excuse to override my decisions on any tag allowed in that context.  Let's  
hope this isn't the way Adobe is actually going with Pagemill.

Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK
tdowling at ohiolink.edu