Re: CXS page (fy: (Mis)Naming a Language)

On Saturday, October 30, 2004, at 06:15  PM, Mark J. Reed wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 30, 2004 at 05:39:04PM -0700, Jonathyn Bet'nct wrote:
>> The Internet bureaucrats have been screwing us over by taking out FONT
>> and EMBED and these other things that have been around for ages, and
>> I've had it! I'm using FONT if you want me to or not!
>
> Well, fine, good for you.  It will no doubt continue to work forever,
> but it's nevertheless built on a faulty presumption: that it makes
> sense
> for HTML markup to include presentation instructions.  This was not the
> goal of the HTML design, but a side effect of the browser wars, where
> Netscape and Microsoft added elements to HTML left and right to try and
> convince more page authors to design specifically for their browser and
> thereby get more people to use it.
I know presentation wasn't the goal of HTML, but the cold hard truth is
that on today's Internet presentation is half the web site. In most
instances there probably isn't any valid reason for controlling
formatting, but there are certainly cases in which it would be useful.

> As for <embed>, that was never in standard HTML at all; it was always
> an
> IE-specific element.  Since its usual use is ActiveX controls, that's
> not much of a hardship, of course; if you're using ActiveX controls in
> your page, you've already decided to throw compatibility out the
> window.
I've read that it has caused some grief with Flash animations and
QuickTime video, which are not IE-specific at all. <EMBED> never was
standard HTML, I know that; but it was still supported and used, and
when it was pulled out from underneath us it caused unnecessary
trouble. (Not to say that the introduction of <EMBED> in the first case
didn't cause unnecessary trouble, either. :) )

> Finally, I disagree with the premise that CSS is harder than HTML.
> It's
> different, but not harder.  It actually makes a lot of things easier.
> I
> mean, if I'm going to specify a font for my page, I'd rather do it once
> rather than many, many times with multiple <font> tags all over the
> place.
I didn't mean that CSS was necessarily harder. It's just that C-style
syntax (brackets, braces, commas, and semicolons everywhere) tends to
scare beginners away.

And yes, it certainly does make things easier with regards to making
site-wide changes.


I would like to apologize for the way I responded to this thread; I
wanted to make a point but I handled it badly. I'm now willing to calm
down and have a more mature conversation.

Hasta la pasta,
Jonathyn Bet'nct

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