HTML 4.0 Approved

[JQ Johnson]

I share a lot of Tom Dowlings feelings about the new HTML 4.0 spec.  Like
him, I find the new spec interesting and powerful, and agree that it's going
to be hard to code HTML 4 by hand.  Like him, I see a tension between the
"grubby power grab" and the goal of an open, device-independent web.

I don't think that it's the last chance, though.  We still have XML coming,
which is sufficiently flexible that we can see lots of "grubby power
grabbing and proprietary extensions" while staying inside a fairly clean and
elegant formal spec. 

Looking just at HTML 4.0, though, a couple of additional random notes:

1/ the process that the W3C uses to design specs is quite different from the
IETF process.  It's important to recognize that the HTML 4.0 spec has not
gone through the rigorous multiple-implementations and interoperability
testing that accompany IETF-derived Internet Standards.  I worry that we'll
find lots of little problems with 4.0, and that the lack of existing
implementations may slow adoption.

2/ another important factor that may slow adoption is incompatibility with
previous specs.  In many respects the new HTML 4.0 is not backward
compatible with HTML 3.2 or 2.0.  For example, a rather different MAP
element means that existing correct code for imagemaps can't be 4.0
compliant.  Given that any reasonable web publisher wants to maintain
compatibility with her existing viewer base, it's hard to see how one can
move to HTML 4.0 gracefully.

3/ on the other hand, XML might actually decrease the interest of vendors in
implementing HTML 4.0.  I get the sense that at least some vendors have
decided to effectively skip 4.0 (doing just enough, perhaps, to be able to
trumpet their 4.0-compatibility) and put their development dollars into XML.

The key question, as Dowling notes, is how rapidly, and in what ways, the
major vendors implement HTML 4.0.  There don't look to be any major browser
releases from either Netscape or MS for a few months, so we have some time
to live with HTML 3.2.  The html support in Windows 98 is frozen, and is
presumably pretty close to what's in MSIE 4 -- not very HTML 4.0 compliant. 
What pieces of HTML 4.0 will the new modular Netscape rendering engine
support?

JQ Johnson                      office: 115F Knight Library
Academic Education Coordinator  e-mail: jqj at darkwing.uoregon.edu
1299 University of Oregon       voice: 1-541-346-1746
Eugene, OR  97403-1299          fax: 1-541-346-3485