[WEB4LIB] What's next after HTML?

Tue Nov 19 13:43:23 EST 2002

At 12:57 PM 11/19/2002, Kathy Gaynor wrote:
>I've been trying to keep an eye on issues regarding XML, CSS, Javascript,
>etc.  I was wondering if there was any consensus on steps websites should
>be taking or directions in which they should be moving.  Probably 99% of
>our web pages (<http://library.webster.edu>) are straight HTML.  Should I
>be gradually switching these to Cascading Style Sheets?

I think I understand what you mean, but you cannot "switch" from HTML to CSS.

HTML is a language for describing a document's structure.  CSS is a 
language for suggesting one or more appearances for a document.

I believe what you're asking is whether you should be removing suggestions 
about document appearance from HTML and recasting them in accompanying CSS 
stylesheets.  In my opinion, yes.  But that has been my opinion for five or 
six years now.  :-)

>Should I be adding
>closing tags (e.g. </p>) and cleaning up other code to conform to
>XML?  Should we change our document type definitions?

XML is more than just closing your tags.  IMO, you should close tags 
because some browsers have a history of misrendering pages that leave out 
nominally optional closing tags.

If you're asking whether to switch to XHTML--structural HTML rewritten as 
an application of XML rather than an application of SGML--I don't see any 
pressing need to do that.  It may be an interesting exercise, but it 
doesn't gain you anything in terms of browser support (if you're a 
hardliner about MIME content types, it actually loses you a 
lot).  Especially if your markup validates, HTML 4.01 will remain readable 
for years.

BUT it is unlikely that there will ever be another version of HTML.  When 
and if XHTML 2.0 begins to pick up steam, you'll need to switch to take 
advantage of it.  Of course, by that time, it might be much more common for 
browsers to let you send any XML language down the pipe with the necessary 
stylesheet to display it.

If you include a doctype declaration, it should reflect the DTD you 
actually use. When you tell browsers '<!DOCTYPE HTML SYSTEM "html.dtd">', 
that's HTML 2.0.  Probably not what you really mean.  Check 
<http://validator.w3.org/sgml-lib/catalog> for a very full list of doctype 
declarations.

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