[thelist] Web standards (was: The Web's future: XHTML 2.0)

Jon Hall jonhall at ozline.net
Sun Sep 22 18:04:01 CDT 2002


Sunday, September 22, 2002, 7:29:55 AM, you wrote:

PPK> However, many people are confusing two things:
PPK> 1) The idea that there ought to be standards that everyone follows.
PPK> 2) The actual standards themselves.
PPK> The great attention that WaSP and other involved parties have given to point
PPK> 1 by convincing everyone that standards are there to be followed, means that
PPK> point 2 gets no attention at all.

The actual standards get no attention at all? Who is not paying
attention? Your opinion sure doesn't reflect where my attention lies,
and I don't see how you can say that the many thousands of people who
actually participate in the W3C process don't pay attention to what
they are creating, and it certainly doesn't apply to everyone who has
actually read or is aware of the standards. Hell it's not even true of
you, since you obviously read the article.
If you think that someone just dreams all these standards up, go join
a W3C mailing list and see for yourself.

PPK> In fact, whenever someone (me, for instance) says that this or that detail
PPK> of the standards is wrong, too complicated or whatever, other people see
PPK> this as a denial of the fact that there ought to be standards. Not so.

People have been ignoring large swaths of the standards since html 2.
Feel free to continue to do so, but you said XHTML was "completely
useless", which is why people disagreed with you at the beginning of
this thread, including me, will continue to do so until one of use
sees the light. :)

PPK> W3C has done a great job in inventing CSS and it deserves to be a standard.
PPK> Nonetheless I think there are some errors in the CSS spec, for instance:
PPK> - the box model is completely illogical

CSS is a different topic altogether but saying that the box model is
illogical is completely illogical to me, to me it's like saying milk
that is white is illogical. I don't even have a frame of reference to
disagree. To me the box model is a very simple basic fact describing how
boxes are rendered by browsers.

PPK> - there is no way to vertical-align a text in a DIV with a fixed height

You mean this is impossible? Wait till I show the guys at work!
<div style="height: 500px; width: 500px; position: absolute; background-color: #ffffff;">
        <p style="padding-top: 50%">Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet</p>
</div>
If you know the height of the text, this works perfectly. This is what
vertical-align is for anyway...not sure why it doesn't work in the
browsers though, it's not a problem with the standard though.

PPK> - fixed backgrounds on layers should be positioned relative to the layer,
PPK> not relative to the entire screen

Don't know about that one...if it's a problem that needs to be
addressed in the standards, ask the authors of the spec. They are
accessible.

PPK> On the other hand, I don't see much use for XHTML 2.0 and I think it'll
PPK> never amount to much. Once again, this doesn't mean I don't agree with other
PPK> standards devised by W3C.

PPK> In short, it is possible to generally support the standards movement but to
PPK> disagree with the W3C specs on points of detail. I merely want the standards
PPK> to become better. They aren't perfect yet.

They will never be perfect, however as humans we will constantly
strive to make them more perfect even though we know it's futile.
Nothing, especially the on the Internet stands still. I believe XHTML
2 is progress in the right direction, if I didn't I'd be screaming
left and right right there with you, personally I wish everyone would
drop everything they are doing and get SVG implemented in the
browsers. I think SVG is more important than CSS at this point.

To sum it up, I think XHTML is far from useless, and is a huge step in
the right direction. I can't wait for XForms.


--
jon
mailto:jonhall at ozline.net




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