[WEB4LIB] Future of HTML

[Thomas Dowling]

Fun questions, John.

The OhioLINK web sites started gently using CSS over two years ago, and I
rely on CSS more and more--with the proviso that I keep our stylesheets
safe for Netscape 4.x.

My target for HTML is 4.0 Transitional--when I validate, that's the DTD I
use and have used almost since it came out, but I seldom use a doctype
declaration.  Another proviso--I might use, but certainly never rely on,
some of the features introduced in 4.0.  Again, I keep our pages safe for
Netscape 4.x and readable for Netscape 3.x.

For what it's worth, the browsers I consider
"stylesheet-capable" - Netscape 4.x, IE 4.x and 5.x (but not 3.x), Opera
3.5x - routinely make up more than 90% of our traffic.

An "HTML 4.1" of sorts is taking shape at
<URL:http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-html-in-xml/>.  This is the project to recast
HTML as an implementation of XML, which would let sites maintain a single
set of tools for working with both languages.

I believe that XML is imminent for a large number of server-side
applications; I have a test version of an application that recently
deposited several hundred megabytes of it on me.  It won't be long before
xml2html conversion is a very common server-side function.

I think it will be a long time, as the Web reckons it, before many sites
start sending a lot of text/xml to the browser.  In XML, of course, the
*only* way to address presentation issues is through stylesheets, and it
is still an open question as to what style language will end up being used
(and the browser makers don't have the best record on supporting any style
language fully).

I doubt there will ever be an HTML 5.0.  To my knowledge, there has been
no serious planning for it in the year and half since 4.0 was released,
and by the time there could be a 5.0, there's a reasonable likelihood that
XML will make it unnecessary.  Why work for two years to bring the entire
industry to consensus on HTML 5.0 when anyone can roll their own markup
language?

Besides, there isn't a lot that HTML 4.0 needs added to it; what it needs
is a serious push from the browser makers to support all of it, cleanly
and completely.  IE is currently out in front on 4.0 support;
Gecko/Mozilla and Opera 4.0 have both made promises to support it (the
developer releases of Gecko show that they're doing a good job so far),
but it could be the new millenium before an officially released browser
really comes close to supporting all of it.

Even worse (correction, "much worse") than the browsers are the current
crop of popular authoring tools.  It's hard to talk about structured
tagging--in any language--trees, groves, or DOMs, when so many of the
pages out there consist of gobbledygook spit up by Word, FrontPage,
Composer, Homepage, et al.


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu



----- Original Message -----
From: John Creech <creechj at mumbly.lib.cwu.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list <web4lib at webjunction.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 1999 2:07 PM
Subject: [WEB4LIB] Future of HTML


> Folks,
>
> I've been wondering recently about the "future" of HTML, about upgrading
> our website to HTML 4.0, and other such stuff, and would like to hear
> others' opinions on this.  My crystal ball went south, so I have no way
of
> predicting any of this.
>
> As a very crude experiment, I went to the ARL website, called up the
list
> of members, picked a spot in the alpha index at random, and visited 20
> library sites, just to see how the big dogs are handling 4.0/CSS.  Of
the
> 20 I checked, 6 had implemented 4.0.  Many, like us here, are still
> declaring 3.2, while some had no DTD's.
>
> What do you all see coming up?  Is there going to ever be a "5.0"?  Are
we
> moving to XML?  Are the benefits of upping to 4.0 worth the labor?
>
> Thanks for any comments.
>
> John Creech
> Electronic Resources & Systems Librarian
> Central Washington University Library
> 400 E. 8th Ave. | Ellensburg, WA 98926 | 509-963-1081
> creechj at www.lib.cwu.edu
> personal mail=jcreech at ellensburg.com
> personal pages=www.ellensburg.com/~jcreech
>
>
>