Is the end of HTML as we know it?

[Els]

Here, how's this for accessibiity?
http://www.wmfs.net/wmfs/home.xtml?bhcp=1

If you put your mouse over the little woman, she signs the contents of the
page for deaf users...

LOL!

 

[Phil Payne]

Similarly the deaf; those born profoundly death may not have learned a

spoken language (English, Spanish, German etc) to a high level, and as
such may find pictures easier to comprehend than written words.

"Hey, she's deaf. Just give her some picture books."

That has to be the most ignorant, presumptive, prejudiced and
downright DUMB statement I've read on Usenet for many years.

My late and much lamented grandmother was born profoundly deaf as a
result of her mother catching Rubella during pregnancy.

Not only was reading one of her greatest pleasures in life, but she
was very adept on a piano even though she could hear absolutely
nothing. She had a metronome on top of the instrument and just
enjoyed using her fingers and the rhythm. Even as a seven-year-old I
enjoyed her playing of the classics.

She could lipread at thirty yards and had her eyes checked twice a
year to keep up this capability. Nobody had any secrets from her.

I've known her many times watch TV programmes for a few minutes and
then sort in disgust: "All stolen from Marlowe/Shakespeare/whoever".

She lived near Tamworth in Staffordshire. The Mobile Library used to
stop outside the house once a fortnight and the driver would walk down
the path and wave through the window - she would then go out and get
eight books. You were only allowed four, but she had a ticket in her
husband's name and got another four on that.

The scriptwriters on Starsky and Hutch once admitted they had four
basic plots and two variants, all from Shakespeare. My grandma
spotted every one - ten minutes into a programme she'd tell you which
one they were using and start predicting EVERY SINGLE scene. "He's
the Malvolio character this time."

Until the middle of the eighteenth century, deaf people in England
were unable to "inherit property, to marry, to receive education, to
have adequately challenging work-and were denied fundamental human
rights" (Sachs, Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices. Harper Perennial: New
York, 1990.)

Let's not go back there, huh?

 

[dorayme]

Not really. I mostly visit medium/large web sites which should employ
professional web developers. This means the CSS based layout problem
seems to also be catching up most professional web developers.

In that case, your theory about the tools is strengthened and
more interesting.

Now one more question. What would you imagine about the
appropriateness and quality of the tools if IE could be taken out
of the picture? In fact, just to keep it simple and isolate the
tools business, imagine all browsers of any one type (say, visual
browsers, screen readers, being essentially the same in respect
to their standards and renderings). Would you guess that
professional web authors would *still* be getting it "wrong"?
Unless you have some idea of this, you might be confusing the
quality of tools with the difficulties of coping with browser
variation and especially IE. (There may very well be no tools
that could ever be made to cope with browser variability).

OK, now suppose you came up with a rough idea that they would
still be getting it *too wrong* even though *less wrong*. But
there is yet more work to be done before you can simply complain
about the tools.

Consider this idea of the "professional" website author. If some
of these folks are scoring jobs on any basis other than a
knowledge of the good use of the available tools and a good
understanding of important website building criteria, is it the
tools themselves that are to blame?

Perhaps you might argue that if a proper accreditation system was
implemented, there would not be enough good developers to go
around because the tools are too tricky to get to grips with and
few would graduate.

But why? I think you have conceded that some sites are well made,
so the tools do work in the right hands. People get paid very
handsomely. It is an attractive profession for young people to go
into? Perhaps the tools are not harder than many tools in many
other professions. It is not a breeze to walk into engineering
and to be able to design and troubleshoot control systems in a
manufacturing plant. Not anyone can do it just like that. Nor by
merely reading a book or two and 'having a go'. There needs to be
a serious study of it. The tools themselves are the maths, the
electronics, the mechanical or chemical theories and whatever is
appropriate.

You would get onto stronger grounds and be making more
substantial insights about the inadequacy of the tools if you
could show that they were too hard even for a sufficient number
of educated developers to be turned out.

 

[dorayme]

Here, how's this for accessibiity?
http://www.wmfs.net/wmfs/home.xtml?bhcp=1

Now *that* is sheerly brilliant!

 

[1001 Webs]

And lo, Matt didst speak in a-buncha-groups:



I forgive you.

Here, how's this for accessibiity?
http://www.wmfs.net/wmfs/home.xtml?bhcp=1

If you put your mouse over the little woman, she signs the contents of the
page for deaf users...

Nice detail.
Shouldn't you indicate it in some way to deaf users?
A little sign, perhaps, above her?

Don't jump on me now, it's just a good-intentioned suggestion ...

 

[1001 Webs]

"Hey, she's deaf. Just give her some picture books."

That has to be the most ignorant, presumptive, prejudiced and
downright DUMB statement I've read on Usenet for many years.

My late and much lamented grandmother was born profoundly deaf as a
result of her mother catching Rubella during pregnancy.

Not only was reading one of her greatest pleasures in life, but she
was very adept on a piano even though she could hear absolutely
nothing. She had a metronome on top of the instrument and just
enjoyed using her fingers and the rhythm. Even as a seven-year-old I
enjoyed her playing of the classics.

She could lipread at thirty yards and had her eyes checked twice a
year to keep up this capability. Nobody had any secrets from her.

I've known her many times watch TV programmes for a few minutes and
then sort in disgust: "All stolen from Marlowe/Shakespeare/whoever".

She lived near Tamworth in Staffordshire. The Mobile Library used to
stop outside the house once a fortnight and the driver would walk down
the path and wave through the window - she would then go out and get
eight books. You were only allowed four, but she had a ticket in her
husband's name and got another four on that.

The scriptwriters on Starsky and Hutch once admitted they had four
basic plots and two variants, all from Shakespeare. My grandma
spotted every one - ten minutes into a programme she'd tell you which
one they were using and start predicting EVERY SINGLE scene. "He's
the Malvolio character this time."

Until the middle of the eighteenth century, deaf people in England
were unable to "inherit property, to marry, to receive education, to
have adequately challenging work-and were denied fundamental human
rights" (Sachs, Oliver Sacks, Seeing Voices. Harper Perennial: New
York, 1990.)

Let's not go back there, huh?

A practical guide to teaching and supporting deaf learners in foreign
language classes

This book is about deaf people learning spoken/written foreign
languages. To date there has been a dearth of information on this
subject, and in that vacuum there has been a tendency to think that
deaf learners should be steered away from foreign language learning.
http://www.directlearn.co.uk/ashop/catalogue.php?cat=8

How the Deaf (and other Sign language users) are Deprived of their
Linguistic Human Rights.
http://www.terralingua.org/DeafHR.html

 

[Chaddy2222]

That's just the thing: your portfolio shows static sites. Why
shouldn't it just be a series of images with text? There is nothing
that Flashy effects could add to it. There is no interaction needed in
the portfolio as far as I can see, and the visual effects are just not
needed at all. They don't help convey your message, in fact quite the
opposite. If you want the slideshow, use unobtrusive JavaScript so
that a visitor without JavaScript can still browse it with regular
links, and those with JavaScript will get the slideshow bonus. (if it
is a bonus, but that's a matter of personal taste)

Just look at it from the potential customer's point of view: he's
blind, and is looking for someone who makes accessible websites.
Unfortunately he can't check out your accessible work, because you hid
it in inaccessible Flash. Tell me, does that make sense at all?

This is an interesting point, the site is aimed mainly at non
profits but still I guess that considering that some of them are
still on dial-up, due to eather cost location or other factors, it
would probably make sence to make the portfolio page an ordinary HTML
page.

 

[Ed Jensen]

Now one more question. What would you imagine about the
appropriateness and quality of the tools if IE could be taken out
of the picture?

I'm not really qualified to answer that question for several reasons.

First, I'm not really very familiar with any of the tools on the
market. The little HTML/CSS/JavaScript that I've written was created
entirely by hand.

Second, I'm not a professional web developer, so I'm not necessarily
familiar with best practices (i.e., the "right way" to do things).

That's not to say I'm entirely unfamiliar with web development. My
wife runs a small business, and I maintain a small web site for her.

I tried doing things the Ivory Tower way (i.e., Separate content and
layout!, Tables are for tabular data only!, etc.), but I found the
experience time consuming and frustrating beyond any measure of good
sense.

And I say that only in the most pragmatic sense. It's a small web
site for a small business! I need to be realistic about how much time
should be invested in it.

Yes, I committed the unforgivable sin of using tables for layout, but
at least it renders correctly in IE6/7, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and
handles text resizing correctly. It even passes W3C validation (both
HTML and CSS). As an added bonus, it even renders correctly in lynx
and links!

Any Ivory Tower types who care to do so may now inform me of my gross
incompetence and how CSS based layouts are easy and I'm a stupid dummy
and shouldn't maintain a small web site because I suck.

In fact, just to keep it simple and isolate the
tools business, imagine all browsers of any one type (say, visual
browsers, screen readers, being essentially the same in respect
to their standards and renderings). Would you guess that
professional web authors would *still* be getting it "wrong"?

Yes, I still think they'd get it wrong, because it's so *very* much
easier to do it wrong than it is to do it right.

Unless you have some idea of this, you might be confusing the
quality of tools with the difficulties of coping with browser
variation and especially IE. (There may very well be no tools
that could ever be made to cope with browser variability).

OK, now suppose you came up with a rough idea that they would
still be getting it *too wrong* even though *less wrong*. But
there is yet more work to be done before you can simply complain
about the tools.

Please keep in mind I'm not complaining about web design programs.

The "tool" that I think should probably be considered broken is CSS
(for layout).

Good tools should make it as easy (as is realistic) to do the "right
thing" and hard to do the "wrong thing".

This is becoming increasingly important as more and more low quality
developers (including web developers) enter the field.

Most modern day companies have made it crystal clear that keeping
developer costs down trumps every other consideration. It would be
naive, in my opinion, to think the problem can be solved with
education, experience, or training. This is how modern day companies
think:

Educated people cost more money. Can't do that.

Experienced people cost more money. Can't do that.

Training costs more money. Can't do that.

Cheap developers. That's the ticket!

I think we can continue to expect to see the field flooded with cheap
developers. The only thing that can really fix the problem is to fix
the tool so that it's easy for the new breed of developers to do the
right thing, and hard for them to do the wrong thing.

That being said, I'm pragmatic enough to realize the problem will, in
fact, NOT be solved. There's too much inertia to overcome now, and
too little desire to fix it.

Some day, a new technology will take the world by storm and replace
HTML/CSS/JavaScript, and then (and only then) will the problem be
solved, in my opinion.

 

[Bone Ur]

Well bust mah britches and call me cheeky, on Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:13:18 GMT
Ed Jensen scribed:

Any Ivory Tower types who care to do so may now inform me of my gross
incompetence and how CSS based layouts are easy and I'm a stupid dummy
and shouldn't maintain a small web site because I suck.

You forgot to mention the paranoia.

Some day, a new technology will take the world by storm and replace
HTML/CSS/JavaScript, and then (and only then) will the problem be
solved, in my opinion.

Well, something new and fairly radical has to happen, that's for sure. But
I doubt most orthodox developers will buy that idea.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

I'm not really qualified to answer that question for several reasons.

First, I'm not really very familiar with any of the tools on the
market. The little HTML/CSS/JavaScript that I've written was created
entirely by hand.

The way many of us develop. HTML/CSS/JavaScript are the tools.

Second, I'm not a professional web developer, so I'm not necessarily
familiar with best practices (i.e., the "right way" to do things).

That's not to say I'm entirely unfamiliar with web development. My
wife runs a small business, and I maintain a small web site for her.

I tried doing things the Ivory Tower way (i.e., Separate content and
layout!, Tables are for tabular data only!, etc.), but I found the
experience time consuming and frustrating beyond any measure of good
sense.

Maybe because you don't know your tools: HTML/CSS/JavaScript Knowledge
is power. Why would you expect to "build a house" when you knew nothing
about carpentry? And expect to be successful? Don't want to learn, then
do what people do when they what a house but don't want to invest in
learning carpentry, hire a carpenter.

 

[Ed Jensen]

Maybe because you don't know your tools: HTML/CSS/JavaScript Knowledge
is power. Why would you expect to "build a house" when you knew nothing
about carpentry?

Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. I didn't need a house, Jonathan.
I needed something considerably less than a house. And I built it.
Quite successfully.

There was simply no need to spend years learning how to build a house
when I needed something considerably less than a house. I used
simpler tools for a smaller job.

It was the kind of pragmatic choice I don't expect Ivory Tower types
to understand. I'm sorry if you find it distasteful that I used
tables for layout.

And expect to be successful? Don't want to learn, then
do what people do when they what a house but don't want to invest in
learning carpentry, hire a carpenter.

What I'm willing to learn is directly proportional to the benefit I'm
expecting to derive from it.

Perhaps you're mistaking me for someone that desires to become a
professional web developer?

 

[Tim Streater]

The way many of us develop. HTML/CSS/JavaScript are the tools.


Maybe because you don't know your tools: HTML/CSS/JavaScript Knowledge
is power. Why would you expect to "build a house" when you knew nothing
about carpentry? And expect to be successful? Don't want to learn, then
do what people do when they what a house but don't want to invest in
learning carpentry, hire a carpenter.

I have to say I am inclined to sympathise with Ed. Why should the tools
be HTML/CSS/JavaScript? Just because Word, FrontPage etc generate crap
HTML does not invalidate the idea of a WYSISYG approach to generating
web pages (for example).

Ed, along with guys like me, is trying to solve the problem of
generating web pages and none of us sees why we should have to pay
expensive consultants if we don't have to. Let the tools evolve to be
easier to use and to be more efficient at what they generate.

Should I have to bring my C code to you and have you laboriously
generate the machine code by hand? I don't think so. Stop behaving like
those guys who used to operate the linotype machines for typesetting
newsprint. They went the way of the dodo when computers came along. It's
just a jobs-for-the-boys protection racket.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

I have to say I am inclined to sympathise with Ed. Why should the tools
be HTML/CSS/JavaScript? Just because Word, FrontPage etc generate crap
HTML does not invalidate the idea of a WYSISYG approach to generating
web pages (for example).

The point is if you need a "shed", a small simple website is not that
hard to do, period. There are plenty of good, free, well constructed
templates out there that all you have to do is paste in your content!
You can modify the the style as time, skill, and interest allow.

WYSISYG editors in general build poorly constructed, bloated markup,
overly positioned, difficult to maintain (where edits==rewrites), and
usually browser-specific sites.

 

[Ben C]

Now one more question. What would you imagine about the
appropriateness and quality of the tools if IE could be taken out
of the picture?

I'm not really qualified to answer that question for several reasons. [...]
Yes, I committed the unforgivable sin of using tables for layout, but
at least it renders correctly in IE6/7, Firefox, Opera, Safari, and
handles text resizing correctly. It even passes W3C validation (both
HTML and CSS). As an added bonus, it even renders correctly in lynx
and links! [...]
The "tool" that I think should probably be considered broken is CSS
(for layout).

I think you're drawing the wrong conclusion. The elephant in the room is
that IE is broken (and I also wish Firefox would support inline-block).
That's why your job was easier using tables. It's not because tables are
actually easier or better than other parts of CSS.

Good tools should make it as easy (as is realistic) to do the "right
thing" and hard to do the "wrong thing".

I agree.

What we're actually comparing here is two subsets of CSS: tables on the
one hand (yes they are part of CSS) and CSS minus tables minus
inline-block on the other hand.

I don't think the former subset achieves the goal of making it easier to
do the right thing and harder to do the wrong thing any better than the
latter subset.

But whether CSS could be better than it is at achieving that goal is
another question. It very likely could be.

Then there is the further problem that many users of it are really quite
determined to try to do the wrong thing. While the design of a tool
should encourage the right thing, you still can't really expect it to do
that without the user on its side.

[...]

Some day, a new technology will take the world by storm and replace
HTML/CSS/JavaScript, and then (and only then) will the problem be
solved, in my opinion.

There are already other tools. The authors who are fighting HTML/CSS the
most would probably be better off with Flash. But many users don't like
Flash. The smarter authors presumably put two and two together and stop
wanting the wrong thing.

[...]

 

[Tim Streater]

The point is if you need a "shed", a small simple website is not that
hard to do, period. There are plenty of good, free, well constructed
templates out there that all you have to do is paste in your content!
You can modify the the style as time, skill, and interest allow.

WYSISYG editors in general build poorly constructed, bloated markup,
overly positioned, difficult to maintain (where edits==rewrites), and
usually browser-specific sites.

I wouldn't dispute that for a moment. It does not, however, invalidate
the point. It just means there is a yawning gap in the market.

For me a website is a means to an end, no more. You're in danger of
making it the end itself.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

I wouldn't dispute that for a moment. It does not, however, invalidate
the point. It just means there is a yawning gap in the market.

For me a website is a means to an end, no more. You're in danger of
making it the end itself.

Yes but your argument is that deprecated table based websites "work"
where my point is not always so, they tend to be brittle, inflexible for
accessibility and many times browser-specific. That is aside of being a
b*tch to maintain so many are one-time site with very stale content.

 

[André Gillibert]

It is not hard to do the right thing with CSS. It is, perhaps, too
easy to do the wrong thing. What is worse, is that there are too
many people who want to do the wrong thing, or who do not know that
it is the wrong thing. But they can (and do) do that just as easily
with tables as with CSS.

With CSS, they can do it as easy, but they can do more harm, because CSS
is much more powerful than font element and tables.

The font element is a hand gun. You can do much harm with it.
CSS is a bazooka. You can do more harm with it.

Anyway, the worst pages I've seen use font AND tables AND CSS.
(A hand gun + a bazooka)

 

[1001 Webs]

The way many of us develop. HTML/CSS/JavaScript are the tools.






Maybe because you don't know your tools: HTML/CSS/JavaScript Knowledge
is power. Why would you expect to "build a house" when you knew nothing
about carpentry? And expect to be successful? Don't want to learn, then
do what people do when they what a house but don't want to invest in
learning carpentry, hire a carpenter.

Even the best "carpenters" will tell you that there's something
intrinsically wrong with CSS implementation.
There are too many tools designed for the same purpose, for example
font-sizing, and some of them are clearly defective.
I completely agree with the poster's opinion that CSS can be " time
consuming and frustrating beyond any measure of good sense."

 

[André Gillibert]

I call this the "Bjarne Stroustrup Excuse". He always argued that
it's not C++ that's too complex, but instead, developers not being
properly educated.

We all know how that turned out: C++ has little going for it these
days, except simple inertia (i.e., it's not worth rewriting large
bases of code in less complex/better languages). Developers continue
to increasingly choose simpler/better languages these days, such as
Java and C#.

I've programmed many tools, for personal use, with C++, and it works very
well. I wouldn't use Java (too heavy runtime inertia), C# or C. I find
that C++ fits my needs.
C++ isn't the "ultimate universal tool", but it's perfectly fine for many
application fields for people who master the language.

There's a difference between C++ and CSS.
Most C++ developers are somehow trained and produce quite correct
applications.
But, most CSS developers are highly ignorant, and have fundamentally wrong
design principles, such as "it should render identically eveywhere".

Bad I've to use many web sites that've been designed by ignorant web
designers.
If CSS didn't exist or was harder to use by bad web designers, I wouldn't
get all that bad stuff. That's true to a much larger extent for
JavaScript. 99% of the JavaScript of the web is harmful or at best useless.
I often disable author's CSS, but, unfortunately, there're more and more
pages that become hard to read without author's CSS.

While there's some truth to that argument, at some point you need to
be pragmatic. If 99% of the web developers out there are getting it
wrong, maybe the tool needs to be more user friendly.

No, it's misused BECAUSE it's too friendly. You don't need to read any
spec to use it!
e.g. WISYWIG editors worsen the thing.

In the "CSS is a car" analogy, I would say that, you need a driver license
to drive a car (because it's powerful and dangerous) but you don't need a
license to use the powerful and dangerous CSS. Imagine if 3 years old
children were allowed to drive a car without license?

It's my opinion that the underlying problem is somewhere closer to the
tool being too complex. You may have a different opinion, and that's
fine.

The tool is being too complex (because it's powerful), which implies:
1) That IE don't support it.
2) That most web developers don't use it correctly.

Note: Purely from a user point-of-view, user CSS (without author CSS) is
great. If CSS had to be removed from the web then, user CSS should have to
be kept.

 

[1001 Webs]

I've programmed many tools, for personal use, with C++, and it works very
well. I wouldn't use Java (too heavy runtime inertia), C# or C. I find
that C++ fits my needs.
C++ isn't the "ultimate universal tool", but it's perfectly fine for many
application fields for people who master the language.

There's a difference between C++ and CSS.
Most C++ developers are somehow trained and produce quite correct
applications.
But, most CSS developers are highly ignorant, and have fundamentally wrong
design principles, such as "it should render identically eveywhere".

I fail to see what's "fundamentally wrong" with that.
It is a basic graphic design principle.
When you design a magazine or newspaper for example, every page should
look the same in terms of structure.
You can play with the headers, image positioning, etc. but all pages
should follow the same pattern.
That's why you use Templates and grids.

Bad I've to use many web sites that've been designed by ignorant web
designers.
If CSS didn't exist or was harder to use by bad web designers, I wouldn't
get all that bad stuff.

And if CSS was better implemented and was easier to use by every web
designers, you will get even less bad stuff.

That's true to a much larger extent for
JavaScript. 99% of the JavaScript of the web is harmful or at best useless.
I often disable author's CSS, but, unfortunately, there're more and more
pages that become hard to read without author's CSS.


No, it's misused BECAUSE it's too friendly. You don't need to read any
spec to use it!
e.g. WISYWIG editors worsen the thing.

I beg to differ. Many of those tags are useless and not recommended,
so why on Earth are they allowed?
Could you please tell me what's the use of, for example font-size:
10px; ?

In the "CSS is a car" analogy, I would say that, you need a driver license
to drive a car (because it's powerful and dangerous) but you don't need a
license to use the powerful and dangerous CSS. Imagine if 3 years old
children were allowed to drive a car without license?

Even if you have a CSS license you can easily go wrong.

The tool is being too complex (because it's powerful), which implies:
1) That IE don't support it.

So that means that more than half of all Internet users don't support
it.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

2) That most web developers don't use it correctly.

And depending on which web developer you speak to, he/she will tell
you a different thing about how CSS should be used.
And that applies to even the most basic concepts

Note: Purely from a user point-of-view, user CSS (without author CSS) is
great. If CSS had to be removed from the web then, user CSS should have to
be kept.

That makes more sense.