Talk:HTML

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[edit] External links

[edit] Tutorials

I wanted to submit a tutorial that does a very thorough job at explaining html to someone who hasn't even looked at a programming language before SiteSyntax.com HTML/XHTML Tutorial -72.141.0.76 01:33, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

It's not so good. :/ ¦ Reisio 01:43, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
How is it not good? Its thorough, to the point, not cluttered with useless ads or unneccessary pictures, and its far better than the htmldog one. What about the whole forums http://www.sitesyntax.com/vb as a resource? An interactive forum dedicated to website design is far more useful to someone than a list of tags that leaves them to fiure out what they are about. --72.141.0.76 05:53, February 4 2006 (UTC)
The very first thing I saw was wrong. Tags and elements are fundamentally different things. Tags are syntax, elements are structure. So it gets basic terminology wrong. Then I read further, and it starts inventing its own terminology. There's no such thing as "main elements". I read further, it claims that "XML is more accepted [than HTML]", which is untrue. I read further, and the very first example is invalid. And the second. I read further, and it implies that an unquoted href attribute with a slash in it is acceptable for HTML but unacceptable for XHTML - this is wrong too, it's unacceptable for both. I read further, and find that it's referring to the doctype as a "tag" - it isn't. That's just the first section. I see nothing of value here, but lots of mistakes. --Bogtha 13:39, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
While I'm sure some of the things you mentioned there are true, I know that XHTML is more accepted now than HTML, simply because of the neater, stricter coding it enforces making it incredibly useful in corporate website development. You are claiming by what you have written to knw a good deal about html, so you should know that it is practically obsolete now and that practically everyone that knows about xhtml is using it.
Sorry, but that's simply not the case. Even the people who know about XHTML invariably write buggy XHTML-interpreted-as-HTML that wouldn't work if a browser interpreted it as XHTML. Start informing yourself by reading Evan Goer's article and all the articles it links to, or I'm sure there are a few choice articles on Anne van Kesteren's weblog that will educate you. While I disagree with Ian Hickson on his general stance towards XHTML, his 'considered harmful' article will contain a few references for you as well. Stating that HTML is obsolete and XHTML is being used by everybody 'in the know' is ignorant. --Bogtha 17:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Along the same lines, I inserted both those html codes from the first and second example into a webpage: http://xen.250free.com/test1.html http://xen.250free.com/test2.html
But I guess that there is a shining example of how much it doesn't work
I said that it was invalid, not that you couldn't get a particular effect in an average browser. Try running it through a validator or using an aural user-agent. The alt attribute is required in every version of HTML published from 1997 onwards. It's also mandatory if you want to write accessible documents, which is a legal requirement for many people. --Bogtha 17:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
(It also goes to show that if you can't tell that the most basic of codes does work, then you know crap all about html). If you're referring to the abscence of the doctype (Which whether or not its a tag makes absolutely no difference to the coding itself, it just makes it easier to reference to newbies).
Actually, a missing doctype will throw many browsers into "quirks mode", which causes big differences when writing CSS. Doctype switching is a concept that's been around for the past five or six years. --Bogtha 17:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Fact of the matter is, unless you're a geek striving to make sure that all the terminology used to describe a programming language because you've programmed with it for 20 years is perfect, than that tutorial is perfectly fine for any newcomer. - 72.141.0.76 20:31, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Wait a second, do I 'know crap all about HTML', or am I an expert that has been using it for 20 years? Make your mind up.
The fact is, like Rufous says, terminology matters. If a newbie doesn't know the proper names for things, they'll be lost when they look things up in the specification, or try to use a search engine to find more information. And mixing up two entirely different concepts, structure and syntax, is indefensible when you are trying to teach newbies. Oh, and anybody calling HTML or XHTML 'programming languages' is in no position to tell others what is and isn't a good tutorial, because they are in dire need of reading a good one themselves. --Bogtha 17:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
HTML is not a programming language, and terminology does matter. This tutorial is inadequate and misleading, and your attempts to defend it are only making it worse. Rufous 22:17, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Semantics man! It is a programming language. Maybe not in the traditional sense, but you are still programming, and it's still a language. Me defending someones tutorial has nothing to do with making it better or worse. Man you geeks are on crack or something to be pushing so much semantics when it doesn't matter. If you have a chunk of code and someone says "That there isn't an element, its a tag", it will not make the code suddenly not work.
No, but what it will do is confuse two very important concepts in a newbie's mind. And isn't what the newbie learns from the tutorial the most important thing in judging whether a tutorial is worthwhile or not? --Bogtha 17:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
Either way I understand its not that great from the perspectives of someone that probably has several years less experience with html than myself. I will relay your comments to the original author for him to make improvements. - 72.141.0.76 06:02, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
If you aren't yourself the original author of this tutorial, I can't help but feel you have done the author a disservice by advocating it here while demonstrating your ignorance of the subject. Rufous 13:13, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I too believe that you are the original author, and I don't believe for a second you have several years experience, let alone several years more than I. That would be more than enough time to figure out the right names for things, and clearly you are still at the stage where you call everything a 'tag'. --Bogtha 17:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)
I am not the original author, but I am the co-admin on that website. I myself have been programming (Or coding, if it makes a world of difference) HTML since a very young age. About 13 years now. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.141.0.76 (talk • contribs • WHOIS) . 5 February 2006
I am the original author, and I am sorry for my friend shit-talking. Fact is, that is a vary rough tutorial that I wrote up without regard for proper wording or syntax. It's simple there until I code in a tutorial submission section at which point I'll do it properly. - Floydian

[edit] Adding a tutorial link

Would anyone think that davesite's interactive html tutorial is worthy of addition to the links list? Geekosaurus 17:53, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Um...where on that page does the tutorial start? Jaxad0127 17:58, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
No. ¦ Reisio 18:53, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
I think not either.


New tutorial link suggestion though - Ragnarev.com - HTML Tutorials Updated Weekly - As you can see, I just added the first chapter.

[edit] HTMLQuick.com: site suggestion

Hi, I want to recomend this tutorials page. I'm the owner and I know how things are about web promotion, but I've been making this site for the last four months and I think it's a good resource. I hope you give it a look and read the content, given that I really tried to do my best to provide people with the information they need in an easy to understand way. Besides, I intend to update and correct it every time it's needed. If you think it can be a good resource for the readers of this article, please consider adding a link. The tutorials page is HTML tutorials. Thank you...

Can somebody answer my request please? Thank you...

You didn't make a request (or at least not one that required an answer). ¦ Reisio 17:30, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Ok, my question is: does this tutorials page qualify to be linked from the Wiki article? if it doesn't, can you please tell me why? Thank you...
IMO, no, because:
  1. you have many errors/bad examples (will try and go through and point them out later)
  2. you're misusing XHTML 1.1
  3. you're misusing tables
  4. there are lots of ads on your site
  5. we already have some decent links and don't really need more
¦ Reisio 16:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Good. I've been working all day to solve the tables issue (and other semantic and presentational issues). Now all tables present are meaninful and I finally achieved a tableless layout, but I'd really apreciate a couple of answers: What do you mean with "XHTML 1.1 misusing"; and could you help me pointing the errors/bad examples?
I really appreciate and thank you for the information you're providing me.
This is only a guess on my part, but by misuing xhtml 1.1 Reisio may be referring to your meta element declaring the content type as text/html. To the extent your server and/or user agents use that meta element to determine the MIME type for the document, the document is being delivered with a MIME type not intended for XHTML 1.1. If you change your DTD to an XHTML 1.0 DTD then as far as I can tell you'll be back in compliance with W3C specs. Alternatively you could change the MIME type in the meta to application/xhtml+xml and be sure the HTTP server delivers the document as that MIME type. however, i believe you'll lose all Interenet Explorer users in the process since Microsoft has committed themselves to providing the best web browsing experience cavemen have ever seen. --Cplot 05:18, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I noticed some problems. There are some minor spelling errors (just bringing it up). You don't always need to close tags in XHTML ("OMITTAG NO" usually blocks it). Several rules on your XHTML page are very wrong:

Nested elements must obey correctly to their hierachical order.
Valid: 
<span class="double"><b>Execute</span></b>
Invalid: 
<span class="double"><b>Execute</b></span>
You need to switch those
All ampersand symbols must be written using it's entity name (&amp;), even in URLs.
Valid: <a href="buysell.php?id=1&amp;sub=2">Buy &amp; sell</a>
Invalid: <a href="buysell.php?id=1&sub=2">Buy & sell</a>
URLs are character data and so ampersands don't need to be encoded. They have a special meaning in URLs and encoding them will loose that meaning.
Character entity references must allways be lowecase due to the XML case-sensitivity (except for the hexadecimal code).
Valid: &#xE1; - &aacute;
Invalid: &#XE1; - &AAcute;
Several entities are supposed to have capitalization (uppercase alpha versus lowercase). The second named one doesn't even exist in HTML.
The "id" and "name" attributes must not be defined at the same time in the elements "a", "applet", "form", "frame", "iframe", "img" and "map". As the "name" attribute for these elements is already deprecated in XHTML 1.0 and may not be supported by further versions, the recomendation is to use the "id" attribute instead.
Valid: <a id="bookmark1">Anchor</a>
Invalid: <a id="bookmark1" name="anchor1">Anchor</a>
I've never heard that and it's completely untrue, I checked.
Commented text will be completely ignored by an XML parser, wich means that commenting scripts or style codes to "hide" them from old browsers will be as erasing them. If the script or style code contains a character "&" or "<" they will be processed by the XML parser. To avoid this problem you can choose to declare them in externa files or to use the CDATA block.
Valid:

<style type="text/css"> <![CDATA[

p { color: blue; }

]]> </style>

Invalid:

<style type="text/css"> <!--

p { color: blue; }

--> </style>

Um...yeah. The XML parser doesn't need to see those anyways.

I won't continue looking at your site. Jaxad0127 05:25, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Let me provide some corrections to the above corrections. Its a bit difficult to see what's coming from where without looking at the site side-by-side with the above commentary, so let me just list the corrections here.

  • XHTML elements must alwyas be closed. Empty elements in XHTML can use the self-closing tag such as <br />, but the elements must be closed either that way or with an excplisit close tag.
  • I don't have a W3C reference for this handy, but my understanding is that CDATA was always meant to include character entity references and that browsers have gone out of their way to interpret & and other such things as non character references whenever it could be done. Proper XHTML calls for an end to the confusion and to always use the proper &amp;; character references even in CDATA sections. If you try an URL in a modern browser where the &'s are replaced with &amp;'s you'll see it works as expected.
  • The "name" attributes are deprecated on just about everything in XHTML 1.0 It remains on HTML form elements until those are replaced by XForms. The "name" attribute remains on meta elements, though the XHTML 2.0 draft replaces that with a "property" attribute. The "name" attribute remains on object and param elements but its meaning there relates to the plugin/handler of the object and paramter (just param in XHTML 2) and not in the sense historically used in HTML. The W3C recommends for compaitbility setting both the "name" and "id" attributes on those elements that have a "name" attribute but ensuring they are set to the same value.
Valid: <a id="bookmark1">Anchor</a>
Invalid: <a id="bookmark1" name="anchor1">Anchor</a>
Recommended for Compatibility <a id="bookmark1" name=bookmark1">Anchor</a>
  • The CDATA block is actually important. Since comments are to be treated as comments a user-agent is actually supposed to ignore anything with a comment block. That menas a script data or tylesheet data within a comment will be ignored. So this is an important change for XHTML versus HTML (though user-agents may still not adopt the recommendations of the W3C and enforce this strictness relating to comments). But if a document is delivered as application/xml or application/xhtml+xml then it would be best to follow the recommendation. --Cplot 08:30, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi! First of all I thank everybody, you're helping me a lot. I've already made some corrections and want to point some things out:

  • About the ampersand issue, the statement in the site is correct. Please refer to C.12 Using Ampersands in Attribute Values (and Elsewhere) in the XHTML 1.0 Specification.
  • That thing of the "name" and "id" attributes... I can't figure out how I wrote that down, but it's wrong given that such declaration does not put two attributes of type ID in a same element (the name attribute is of type CDATA or NMTOKEN in XHTML).
  • The issue of the scripts and style code (CDATA blocks) can be clearified at Script and Style elements in the XHTML 1.0 Specification.

I'll place one more question: now that I've changed to XHTML 1.0 Strict, did I solve the problem of XHTML misusing?

I've corrected all the rest, and keep going. I'd appreciate more help. Thank you...

My thoughts on the comment tag were because modern browsers know how to ignore them in style and script tags, and send their contents to the proper parsers/interpreters. Using CDATA, older browsers might not catch that as a comment and think of it as a bad tag and possibly display it. Jaxad0127 16:26, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I think we're misusing this discusion page so if you would like to help me pointing out errors in my site, please go to my User talk page. I will appreciate any help. Thank you...

Diegosolo 01:55, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Hi, since the last time I wrote here I've been making some serious changes to the site. I achieved a tableless layout and made all the tables meaningful. I have valid XHTML 1.0 and CSS and also give my best effort to make the page accessible for people with disabilities (W3C WAI-AAA) wich means that my site now can be accessed and read by that minority that represent persons with disabilities. You can see a fast check of that at HTMLQuick.com check results, and you can also check there the other tutorials pages you're linking to, and see how accessible they are. I keep working on the site, I've corrected some errors and made some other changes to improove it.

I think this page now deserves a place in the links section, because of the amount of work I put on it every day, beacause of the free for everybody content, and given that it offers what the others present don't: Accessibility.

I trust your judgement to be fair and conscient.

Thank you...

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Diegosolo (talk • contribs).

"I think this page now deserves a place in the links section, because of the amount of work I put on it every day, beacause of the free for everybody content, and given that it offers what the others present don't: Accessibility."
The sites listed in the article are each already free and accessible, by your own metric. They took a lot of work to create too, I assure you. Rufous 16:38, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
I have to agree with Rufous. Every site currently listed has been carefully looked at. Called the W3C's website unaccessable is nonsense. They follow every standard they make down to the letter and that includes accessablility ones. Jaxad0127 17:49, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
Be noticed that I did found accessibility issues in, at least, one of the sites you're actually listing. As I'm not here to point the site out I will only say that. You should be able to find it out. Bye... |unsigned by Diegosolo 18:37, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd say the site proposed for the external link seems like a fine addition now. I would support adding it. --Cplot 21:24, 23 August 2006 (UTC)
About the amount of work I put every day on the site, I tried to say that the site will be updated, that a person behind of it is constantly making it better. And about the addition of the site... I think it does qualify and is already supported by Cplot. I'll wait for your answer. Thank you... Diegosolo 02:22, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

People I'm adding the link given that no one has objected. Regards... Diegosolo 16:59, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] external link policy

[edit] Policy

recently there have been a number of links added by anons which i have removed for being imo mediocre quality and possible self promotion.

imo the current external links here are a bit of a mess we need to clearly divide them in to offical and unofficial stuff and then go through the unoffical stuff justifying why each link is relavent. Otherwise i fear we will either drown in a sea of interwiki links or end up with the links basically frozen by reverts. Plugwash 18:19, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. This article is in pretty good shape compared to other articles, but it is certainly a tempting place to add link spam. Rl 19:04, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
I am of the opinion that we should remove all links except for those to the W3C. The rest, being unofficial, are therefore not encyclopedic. This isn't the place to advertise tutorials. The one exception may be W3Schools, but it's no more official than the rest. —Sean κ. ⇔ 19:39, 16 May 2005 (UTC)
I disagree. I'm familiar with most HTML tutorials on the web and most of them are pretty mediocre. Spotting the links that don't belong is easy. Enforcing a link policy like this that doesn't formally exist elsewhere in Wikipedia will not drive down the time needed to filter the poor links. (Disclosure: I'm the webmaster of HTMLSource) Rufous 08:21, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
I support having a few(!) links to good tutorials outside W3C but we do need some decent method for determining what's in and what's out, and I don't agree that this is easy. Documenting for every link (say, by adding a comment) why it is there would be a good start. I regularly remove link spam from articles, but that's often a tricky task especially if the subject is not familiar (and unfortunately, link spam turns also up on articles that don't get patroled by knowledgeable people often enough). Rl 08:56, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
I just feel like anyone capable of searching for "HTML" on Wikipedia is also capable of searching for "HTML tutorials" on Google, which is the proper tool for that sort of thing. I'm also of the opinion that if people want to learn HTML, or any web design topic, they're best off going to the library and getting a book, since it is difficult to learn when you have to keep ALT-TABbing between browser windows. —Sean κ. ⇔ 11:22, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps a link to appropriate pages on Wikibooks or Wikiversity would be better. Talonhawk 02:50, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

There is a lot of useful information on WP (especially links) that might as well be googled. OTOH, WP is not a web directory. <shrug> If you guys can agree on something, I can go with any decision. In this case, all I care about is that the article doesn't contain an endless list of links and not even a rough guideline to remove the junk. Rl 11:46, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

How about this:
  1. Every link should be annotated, and,
  2. If a link can't have more than two meaningful sentences written about it, it shouldn't be included.
Seems like a good rule in general. —Sean κ. ⇔ 17:48, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Can anyone tell me where this link could be placed? I can't find a wikipedia page on converting HTML to any format (PDF or PS). http://publicliterature.org/html2pdf/ Thanks for the help. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.183.160.220 (talk • contribs). 2 May 2006

Portable Document Format if anywhere, but even there it's somewhat out of context. So I'd say nowhere. - Dammit 21:05, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Actual links

ok here are the links from the misc section along with some comments on each feel free to add (and sign) your own comments on each. Plugwash 09:50, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

First off, thanks for starting the actual work. As far as I am concerned, you can very well go ahead and remove links from the article based on your impression or the discussion here. Let me also state that I don't claim this is a vote. I am just adding my comments because it's a good way to get establish some consensus in this grey area. Rl 10:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm going to voice my opinion again that books are the best way to learn anything about web site construction. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the name of the book I learned from (it was called "{Teach yourself, Learn} HTML in n Days", where n is one of 7, 14, or 21. I believe it was about HTML 2). Anyone know any good ones? —Sean κ. ⇔ 00:12, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
Interesting. HTML is one the few languages for which I never cosidered buying a book. There isn't that much to learn in plain HTML, there are plenty of tutorials on the web, and you can always look at the source of well-designed sites to learn more. Also, unlike say C or Perl, there doesn't seem to be the standard reference book everyone uses. Nothing stands out. Thus, I'd rather not mention any books. Rl 07:44, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] ISO 8859-1 Table with HTML Entity Names

  • ASCII - ISO 8859-1 Table with HTML Entity Names
    • looks old dodgy and misleadingly titled but we might wan't to make sure we have all this infomation elsewhere with appropriate links before removing it Plugwash 09:50, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • There should be a better source for this but I don't have one at hand. Rl 10:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • W3C's reference is more official, though hard to read. —Sean κ. ⇔ 16:22, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
      • No kidding. Maybe we should write our own, easy to read, version? It ain't rocket science, after all. Rl 16:28, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
        • Good call. There really aren't that many that need to be included, just &gt;, &lt;, &aacute;, and so on. Everything else can be created by knowing the Unicode number. I don't have time to make it nice, but maybe something like...
Actually, we should probably just link to Unicode and HTML and spruce it up a bit. —Sean κ. ⇔ 16:58, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Well, the goal should be a complete list. But maybe somebody will fill in the rest if we create a page with a bunch of important examples. Unicode and HTML could contain a link to the same page. List of HTML entity names maybe? Rl 17:15, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Sounds good, though using W3C's reference, I count on the order of 200 named entities. Not a small task. —Sean κ. ⇔ 17:31, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
I've made one of those tables before; if you know your regular expressions it's not too tricky. I'd remove the link completely instead of replacing it. This is more at home in Character encodings in HTML, which is already under "see also." Rufous 18:08, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
Good point. There's even a link to a readable version on that page. I removed this external link as well. Rl 19:03, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
On that note do you think we should do some kind of series box for web related articles so its easy to find all the info that we do have on html? Plugwash 22:10, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
I am leaning towards no at this point, for two reasons:
  1. The sheer number of web related articles makes it a cumbersome task, best tackled by a WikiProject.
  2. Who is the target audience? People who want to learn how to design a web page? I don't think we should be writing to them, just like the Pottery page shouldn't be writing to people wanting to make pottery. I think we should be writing to people who use this page as a reference or to get an overview of the topic, in which case a series box for web related articles might not be as useful as, say, a series box for W3C recommendations.
—Sean κ. ⇔ 23:25, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
thing is we have quite a few articles describing different things about html. By putting them together as a series people can easilly find all the info we have on the subject. If we are going to have lots of info on a subject may as well try and keep it in a form thats easy to navigate. Plugwash 23:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
I'll just pretend that you said "we should do some kind of series box for HTML related articles", and that I never said anything ;) —Sean κ. ⇔ 23:52, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
There is now a HTML series template and a List of XML and HTML character entity references article. — mjb 23:13, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] NCSA's Beginner's Guide to HTML

  • NCSA's Beginner's Guide to HTML
    • iirc the ncsa was a major html pioneer so i think this can stay. Plugwash 09:50, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I'd rather remove this. It's ancient. A lot has happened since it was last updated. This is not History of HTML tutorials. Rl 10:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I'd also support removing this. Certainly, it was a very important tutorial 6 years ago, but it's ancient. Rufous 15:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Any tutorial that still says, "The </P> closing tag may be omitted. This is because browsers understand that when they encounter a <P> tag, it means that the previous paragraph has ended. However, since HTML now allows certain attributes to be assigned to the <P> tag, it's generally a good idea to include it." [1] should not be included, IMO. —Sean κ. ⇔ 17:36, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Removed. Rl 17:56, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] HTMLSource: HTML Tutorials

  • HTMLSource: HTML Tutorials
    • a html tutorial... what if anything is special about it Plugwash 09:50, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I'd remove all tutorials here, but I'd support keeping/adding a link to a tutorial if knowledgable people can agree on something. Rl 10:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • My site. I firmly believe it to be the best site for beginners available. Rufous 15:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Fair enough. I appreciate open disclosure, so I don't mind that it's your site. However, I'd appreciate if someone less partial could chime in. Rl 16:19, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I think this has sound and up-to-date content, which unfortunately is made a bit hard to follow by the formatting. Not perfect, but good. Aapo Laitinen 18:23, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)
    • Seems pretty good (aside from referring to things as "tags" :p). ¦ Reisio 19:59, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Dave's HTML Code Guide

[edit] HTML Dog

  • HTML Dog
    • some kind of guide. Is there anything special about it?
    • Nothing special. Remove. Rl 10:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • A good site, clean and up to date, and teaches CSS straight out of the gate. There's some crossover between HTMLSource and this, but I think it should stay. Rufous 15:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
      • We have a separate article on Cascading Style Sheets with its own link section that is (surprise, surprise) too long. I don't see the need for CSS tutorials in this article even though they are related. Rl 16:19, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Excellent, with very little to wish for (should talk more about validation and XML, I think). If there are going to be tutorial links here, this should stay. Aapo Laitinen 18:23, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

[edit] Web Standards Awards

  • Web Standards Awards
    • who runs theese awards and are they respected enough to deseve a place here
    • If it's notable, someone will add an article for it. Then we could add a "see also" link (maybe see also List of Web Awards or something). For now, I'd remove this as well.
    • Yeah, this shouldn't be here. Rufous 15:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Removed. Rl 16:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] W3schools HTML tutorial/reference

  • W3schools HTML tutorial/reference
    • who/what are w3schools is there anything special about them that means we should favour this link over others
      • it is not important who/what they are. important is that they have very good, up to date, clearly written tutorials on html, css, JavaScript and many many more. I am adding this link again. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.31.15.222 (talk • contribs). 7 July 2005
        • Removed again. Rl 7 July 2005 08:36 (UTC)
          • 7 July 2005 08:34 Rl: "(rv to last version by 69.138.24.96; we had a consensus for removal of the w3schools.com link)". i disagree. we don't have a consensus. it's a valuable link. and, please, RI, don't name my changes vandalisms. thank you. 83.31.15.222
            • a) Try and convince other editors that the tutorials at this address should be there. I don't really care much about any of those links (the only one I liked was rejected), but we can't have single editors add external links just because they claim the source is valuable. b) I don't think I ever named any of your changes vandalism. Rl 7 July 2005 11:04 (UTC)
    • Nothing special. Remove. Rl 10:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Removed. Rl 16:21, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Removed again. —Sean κ. + 17:28, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • Again. ¦ Reisio 22:20, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Inconsistent in quality, with hardly any consideration of semantics. Used to be one of the better ones, but hasn't kept up with times and is nowadays non-notable. Removed again. Aapo Laitinen 18:22, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] WebMonkey HTML tutorial

  • I seem to remember that it was once a well-known resource, but now it's hard to find the content among the ads. I doesn't seem to offer anything over what we already have. Therefore I'd say remove. Rl 22:40, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Though it pains me to say it (I am/was a big fan of Webmonkey), this has probably been superseded by more modern tutorials. Rufous 23:54, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Removed. Rl 14:09, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Bare Bones Guide to HTML

  • The Bare Bones Guide to HTML
    • Not to add to the confusion, but I found this a valuable resource back when I did some HTML related coding. Apparently it's been translated to 21 languages which I guess says something about its notability. Rl 10:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Also outdated. Rufous 15:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Interesting. The site claims it's up to HTML 4, which AFAICT is the latest version of HTML. Rl 16:19, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
        • True, it's up to date spec-wise. It just doesn't have much educational content since it's a plain reference. Though obviously that's the aim, it doesn't make it very useful in this context. Other sites offer interpretation of the specs as well, which is very important. Rufous 23:54, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] pjf.org.uk

  • Free XHTML and CSS website template with FAQs and instructions on how to add your own content. This seems to be the bit that textbooks leave out.--Peterf 4 July 2005 14:45 (UTC)
    • Haha, good one. Rufous 5 July 2005 14:50 (UTC)

[edit] Webmonkey HTML cheat sheet

  • The HTML Cheatsheet is a very shallow resource; surely there are better ones out there. And, as was pointed out by someone who attempted to remove the link, it contains some deprecated attributes that, while perhaps still widely used, would be a disservice to the Web to continue to encourage. I think it would be nice to have one link to a 'cheat sheet' of some sort, but can anyone provide good reasons to keep this one above all others? (also see above discussion re: the Webmonkey tutorial) — mjb 23:05, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
    • Agreed. Basically my feeling is that deprecated or not, you are conforming to the W3C's way of thinking - you may as well be conforming to what the web will actually be supporting. That said, I've no problem with a link marked "Information on deprecated elements" or the like - but even better would be a small section within the article covering/listing them. Regardless, this link is a sorry one, because it doesn't make the distinction between deprecated and not. ¦ Reisio 03:25, 2005 July 30 (UTC)
    • Remove it. --minghong 04:09, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] htmlhelp.org

  • Would anyone object to adding a link to The Web Design Group's HTML Help resources? Their HTML guides in particular are thorough, very accurate, and 'socially' responsible. I have used their offline versions for years. — mjb 23:04, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
    • Looks a lot like the w3.org spec (which is already listed), but at least that means it's not bad. ¦ Reisio 03:30, 2005 July 30 (UTC)

[edit] HTML Goodies

I'd like to nominate HTML Goodies as a tutorial site. It has helped me with all the basic stuff I need to know about HTML.—King Bob324 16:14, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

  • It's very convoluted and hard to follow, and there are way too many ads. Also, the content isn't really that good. In short, there are better sites.

[edit] draac.com

  • i find this site very helpful on a day-to-day basis, easy to use tutorials and various java/html generators, i think it deserves a place on the list --Chickendude 03:24, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
    • Uses HTML 3.2 doctype along with a bunch of HTML 4 mixed in - front page does not validate. Teaches nothing about doctype usage. Teaches usage of breaks instead of CSS for positioning. Teaches invalid use of elements. Marquee tag? IE-only code? Not even going to bother investigating anymore. No, no, and no. ¦ Reisio 05:49, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] HTML.net

Please consider this new HTML tutorial:

http://www.html.net/tutorials/css/introduction.asp

It will give you an easy, yet thorough and correct introduction to HTML.

Regards,

Andreas Astrup, HTML.net

I say no. Tutorials are a dime a dozen and this one is not particularly remarkable. All of its content is completely surrounded by ads (left, right, top, bottom, and I saw at least one non-Google ad banner), so the motivation for being linked from Wikipedia is suspicious. There are also problems with the content. Some are very minor but some are major/misleading:

  • fails to set background color consistently (set your default window background to light grey and see what I mean)
  • refers to "HTML-tags", "web-standards", and "CSS-tutorial" - why the curious hyphenation? Terms that are normally used together should not be hyphenated.
  • calls headings "headlines" even though acknowledges they're actually headings
  • refers to "the newest version of HTML called XHTML" (partially false) and uses XHTML 1.0 compatibility guideline syntax instead of HTML syntax for empty tags, so misrepresents XHTML as HTML
  • says a tag is a "command for the browser" - This perpetuates misconceptions and will interfere with advanced studies. Only a processing instruction or script content should be described as "commands".
  • no trailing slash in "http://www.html.net" href on lesson 8, examples 1 and 7. While not strictly necessary, it's better to get HTML authors into the habit of considering slashes to be important.
  • doesn't mention that id attributes must start with a letter
  • the E in JPEG is mistakenly said to stand for Equipment
  • PNG advocacy
  • lesson 10: "keep your head cool"? I think "keep your cool" was intended
  • lesson 12 encourages the use of pixel sizes for fonts rather than percentages
  • for domain registration, links to just one specific registrar without suggesting that there are other options
  • mini-history of browsers and standards fails to mention that the W3C is not a neutral standards body, it is an association of companies that pay to be members, and the 'standards' it produces partially (and sometimes wholly) reflect the will of those companies, browser makers included. HTML 3.2, for example, was a rubber stamp on Netscape and Internet Explorer's properietary extensions to the language. Older HTML versions offered a lot of leeway for such extensions to exist. There is a common misconception by people who entered web site development in the 2000s that standards come first and are developed by neutral bodies, when in fact they often come in response to implementations, and reflect compromises between competing vendors.
  • conflates Document Type Declaration and Document Type Definition (DTD)

mjb 20:26, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Dear Mike Thanks for some very useful comments.

  • Only Google adds are shown on the site. I have now removed the left and the bottom ads.
  • The background color has been set on all pages
  • The hyphenations has been corrected (English is not my first language).
  • Headlines are now headings.
  • Has changed the line "the newest version of HTML called XHTML" to "a new and stricter and cleaner version of HTML called XHTML" and added a new line in lesson 2: "In this tutorial you will learn so-called XHTML (Extensible HyperText Mark-up Language) which, in short, is a new and more well-structured way of writing HTML". (notice "in short"!)
  • If a tag is not a command what is it then? I can not find a better word.
  • The trailing slashes has been added to the URLs
  • This line has been added to lesson 8: "An id attribut must start with a letter"
  • Lesson 12 is only a very brief introduction to CSS. I do not encourages the use of pixel sizes for fonts rather than percentages. In our CSS tutorial users learn to use percentages rather than pixels.
  • And extra link has been added to domain registration (as examples)
  • In the description of W3 I do not mention that W3 "is not a neutral standards body". On the other hand, I do no describe W3 as a neutral body. I only give a very short introduction. Instead I link to W3 for further information. I think that is fair and neutral.
  • The DTD error has been corrected.

Even if the tutorial doesn't make it to Wikipedia, it has been some very useful comments. Thank you very much! Regards, Andreas Astrup - HTML.net

The improvements are good; thanks for making them. In various examples you forgot to put the xmlns attribute in the 'html' start tag. Lessons 9 and 12 still have banner ads at the top instead of Google ads. As for way the W3C and standards are characterized, it's a sensitive topic for me. I think I sum up my feelings quite well over on Talk:Web standards. Anyway, overall I don't think you've written a bad tutorial, but I don't know if it's unique and well-written enough to warrant a link here. I'd rather others review it and make that decision. —mjb 09:14, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
Again, thanks for your comments, Mike! I try to keep the examples as simple as possible. I think introducing the xmlns attribute earlier in the tutorial will confuse people.
The ads in lesson 9 and 12 are also Google ads. I just think someone bought banner advertising.
I still hope the tutorial will make it to the list (next to the other 2 tutorials - and 7 validators(!?). Why is that?) --194.255.144.229 18:50, 27 June 2006 (UTC)


I'll take the liberty to add the tutorial to the list. I belive the tutorial to be as good as the two others. Maybe weaker in some ways but stronger in others. I see it as a good supplement and belive the article will be better with at least 3 alternatives tutorials.

I very much hope the tutorial will stay. But will look forward to all comments.

Regards, Andreas Astrup, HTML.net --194.255.144.229 08:05, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

The link has been removed - without any comments. I have added the link again (hope this this is all right). Would like to hear some comments. Regards, Andreas Astrup, HTML.net --194.255.144.229 07:24, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] misc section

Oh, and by the way, let's get rid of the "misc" external links section. It is an open invitation for people to add all kind of unrelated stuff. Rl 10:46, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

It's now "tutorials", which seems apt. Also, the validators section only really needs two entries: those for the W3C and HTMLHelp validators. Rufous 15:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Except that several of the links there don't fit the description "Tutorials" :-). I removed two of them where the three of us who have participated in the discussion seem to clearly agree. Rl 16:07, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] WP:ASR

Wouldn't the Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability/HTML link in See also be considered self-reference? I'm a relatively new user, so I'm not quite sure what all qualifies as a self-ref. NapoleonB 17:35, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] DOCTYPE is outdated

Can I change the doctype to XHTML 1.1? I think that if someone comes here just to find that they may want the latest. Zoohoo 15:52, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

XHTML is not HTML, and the DOCTYPE is not outdated. Did you see the part in the intro that says "…many consider XHTML to be the "current version" of HTML, but it is a separate, parallel standard; the W3C continues to recommend the use of either XHTML 1.1, XHTML 1.0, or HTML 4.01 for web publishing."?—mjb 23:37, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

No, I just wasn't looking and going by my usual thoughts that XHTML is the "current version" of HTML —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Zoohoo (talk • contribs). 13 May 2006

[edit] HTML 5

There is an HTML 5 draft spec in the works, it might be a good idea to add some information about that to the page. See [2], [3] and [4] for evidence of its existence. It's currently split into two sections, one is Web Applications 1.0 and the other is Web Forms 2.0. I was surprised nothing was mentioned on the page about HTML 5 being worked on. 12.226.178.27 18:01, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

First I've heard of it. Interesting effort, but not being IETF, W3C, or ISO based, it reminds me of something that happened back around 1999 or 2000: MP3 was taking off, and MPEG-4 video was not on people's radar, so some company decided to market their audio format as "MP4" in an effort to mislead people into thinking it was the next generation, something people would want to "upgrade" to. The fact that today I'm not able to find a reference for that format shows how non-notable that "MP4" turned out to be. Unless this "HTML5" and its "working group" is getting press in relatively high-profile publications or acknowledged by major standards bodies, I predict a similar outcome, especially considering the W3C has launched a similar working group.—mjb 06:02, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
The W3C is working on XHTML standards instead of new HTML standards. Jaxad0127 06:18, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
I think the term is a bit ambigous. The W3 is working on the next version of HTML ported from SGML to XML. XML is another specification developed by the W3 in part to host HTML. They felt the development of HTML was slowed by its SGML underpinnings. By moving it to ML and making the specification easily extensible, various groups are free to develop their own XML based markups to add neww semantic vocabularies within an XHTML document. Of course if those xemantic vocabularies are to be styled in some way, they should also develop comprehsnsive default stylesheets for those semantic vocabularies, so noone is left out of consuming the content (users of aural browsers, text-only brwosers, etc). The XML extensions can also be unstyled extensions, such as new elements for the HEAD element, new event/scripting elements or even new vocabularies to include within a specific HTML element (such as the Addres or Cite elements). I'm not that familiar with teh WhatNG proposal (I can't get the web page to load), but the first thing they would need to explain is what the problems are with the W3 proposals that can't meet their needs? I find it hard to imagine what that could be, since the W3 is doing some pretty amazing stuff. Sure, ther are minor details here and there that could use improving, but overall when you look at where XHTML 2 and CSS3 are headed (along with all ther other specifidcations) (XForms, XFrames, MathML, SVG, RDF, XSL) it's all quite impressive.
Actuall, it finally loaded (the whatng web page). It's not really a separate html, it sounds more like html forms related extensions to (and other elements for user-interactive html based data-driven applications). They say they plan to work with and submit proposals to W3. --Cplot 00:37, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, which is hype and means nothing. It's not notable. I stand by my statement above; there should not be any mention of "HTML 5" in this article.
I also feel strongly that your edits w.r.t. XHTML have been polluting this article. XHTML has its own article, so every mention of the topic in the HTML article should be scrutinized. This article is about HTML, not XHTML. XHTML is not the continuation/latest version of HTML; it's a separate language, a "family of … document types and modules that reproduce, subset, and extend HTML" per the W3C. So all the places where you talk about XHTML 1.0, 1.1, etc. like it's the latest version of HTML need to be rethought, because they are promoting a common misconception. You need to stop adding XHTML related information to this article, and back out some of the additions you already made. Also, where did you come up with "XHTML 1.01"? —mjb 02:19, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
But it should be mentioned that XHTML is supposed to be HTML's successor. And Google didn't find "XHTML 1.01" on the W3 site. Jaxad0127 03:04, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
mjb, I don't understand the hostility. I think there are several points of view on this and you've expressed on of them. HTML may be only HTML on SGML only. However,, another way of understanding it is as stated by jaxad0127, that xhtml is html, just ported to xml. There is no HTML sucessor on SGML. And the same group developing XHTML developed HTML (4 anyway). As to why XHTML is a seperate article, that's the kind of thing tha thappens here at wikipedia. They probably should be merged. Sine the differences between html 4 and xhtml 1 are extremely minor (at least from a content model perspective), I'd say there's now justification for separate articles. I'd be interested in hearing the rationale. But please just don't repeat that they are separate things. You seem to really want to promote that these things are very different. The material I added to the artile are meant to explain the similarities — and the differences which are very minor from a practical perspective. I don think those minor composition and content model differences mask sweeping changes that the exentsible nature of XHTML brings about. --Cplot 06:26, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
What do you mean HTML has no successor on SGML? XML derives from SGML, as does XHTML. And looking at the W3 site, they've been controlling the HTMl standard since Tim Berners-Lee, who helped found the consortium. Jaxad0127 06:58, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I think we're arguing the same thing. You get no rebuttal from me on anything you said. I'm trying to understand those who say that XHTML is not HTML (at least not in the sense that they should be discussed in the same article). One argueent (the thread we're in) was that HTML 5 was in development by another group and that menat we shouldn't think of XHTML as a flavor of HTML. However, HTML 5 is not what it sound like from the name. It is just an attention grabbing name for something that would not be its own full replacement (or evolution) of HTML 4. So XHTML 1 and beyond are the next versions of HTML. By design, XHTML 1 shares the exact same content model as HTML 4: (ok, there's the lang and xml:lang attribute change, but other than that). That's my view anyway. But I'd be more interested in hearing why these two versions have different articles on wikipedia? --Cplot 07:49, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Oh yeah, and on the XHTML 1.01, I'm not sure where I go thtat from, I guess it's just the way some describe XHTML 1.0 second edition. --Cplot 07:54, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Safari are starting to implement features of Web Applications 1.0 like the canvas element: Mozilla Gains Canvas Element Support. Therefore, it does merit mention. I'm going to add an external link to the Web Applications 1.0 working draft for now, though.--NeantHumain 01:26, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
I think the WhatWG is (thankfully) backing away from the megolamania name:H TML5. Its clear from their own documentation that they never intended this to sway people away from the W3C's initiatives. Calling it HTML 5 here just adds to confusion. WebApplications 1.0 is a much better term. I still think their proposals are a bit odd. Whatever they proposed is already (perhaps due to their efforts) included in the XForms specification whilc will be added to XHTML 2.0. Though I'd say adding mention of this effort at the end like you did is fine with me. --Cplot 07:27, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, the HTML5 and XHTML5 have substantial meaning in the Web Applications 1.0 working draft.

For compatibility with existing content and prior specifications, this specification describes two authoring formats: one based on XML (referred to as XHTML5), and one using a custom format inspired by SGML (referred to as HTML5). Implementations may support only one of these two formats, although supporting both is encouraged.

--NeantHumain 08:03, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
I also want to add that, like so many of the WhatWG's proposals, its hard for me to see what's unique about the Canvas. I know that Apple introduced it with Safari 1.3. But I'm not sure what's so unique about it. As the article you linked to says: This new element allows Web content providers to use scripting to draw arbitary bitmap graphics [into the element]. Couldn't we use scripting to draw bitmaps into any element already? Apple's other proposals for a range element (UI control typically displayed as a slider for inputing a value from a range of values) is a more substantial improvement. And that's included in the proposed XForms specification. With XForms so far alonog, its hard to imagine what the WhatWG has to offer that's not arleady in the W3C's vision. --Cplot 07:34, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
The canvas element is more than just another generic placeholder to put stuff on like div or the nonstandard layer (Netscape 4). It comes with an API to enable scripts to draw things like lines and polygons. In other words, canvas is the markup side to a Web-based graphics library. Pre-existing DOM methods and built-in ECMAScript functions do not enable a Web developer to draw graphics primitives. The most a developer could do is display or hide an image and change the background color of an object.--NeantHumain 08:03, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Here's a brief primer on the canvas element: [5]. All these function calls made on the canvas element and its context object like getContext(), fillStyle(), fillRect(), beginPath(), etc. are what makes canvas a useful element to have.--NeantHumain 08:09, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
I'm still skeptical. Independent extensions to HTML are not HTML. At best, they're an example of the kind of supplementary markup proposals that may or may not one day be rubber-stamped as a W3C spec. Most of them fall by the wayside, even when they're implemented. ('layer' tags, anyone?) By mentioning them in the article, even in the external links (which are supposed to be of value to researchers, not an all-things-HTML link farm) we're giving them artificial credibility and undue publicity. I suspect some advocacy is being attempted. What independent, reliable publications have written about WhatWG's efforts, and does that real publicity indicate notability of these extensions above any others? That's the litmus test. —mjb 10:37, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

If this is going to be mentioned at all, it needs to be worded more carefully. This is the current wording:

  • Web Applications 1.0 Therein called HTML5 when authored in HTML4-compatible mode and XHTML5 when authored as XML. Note that this is an independant iniitiative cooperating with the W3C.

There are several things that could be better about this (and the wording in there proposal (XHTML2, 3 and 4 anyone?)). For starters, officially there is no HTML5. XHTML is compatible with HTML4. "cooperating with the W3C" is very misleading, implying that the W3C is somehow involved (which it isn't) or that they have the approval of the W3C (again, false). How about this instead:

Jaxad0127 15:30, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] XHTML != HTML

(starting a new subsection here)

It's pretty simple to me: If you're talking about XHTML, then you're not talking about HTML. If you're talking about HTML, then you're not talking about XHTML. The W3C maintains this distinction; when they intend to talk about one or the other, they use the appropriate term. AFAICT they never conflate them; they never use 'HTML' to generically refer to both HTML and XHTML. HTML is by definition an application of SGML. It didn't start out that way and then become an application of XML. The SGML-based language is HTML, and the XML-based one is XHTML. They do indeed call XHTML the (eventual) 'successor to HTML', but that's a distinct concept from being a 'version' of HTML. If the W3C doesn't use "HTML" to refer to both languages, then Wikipedia mustn't, either, as a matter of policy.

The history of the two articles is that they have always maintained the distinction. In fact the HTML article hasn't really changed that much in the last two years, until this month's additions. The XHTML article, which has existed just as long, has always been the primary source of info on that topic, and it wasn't until recently that the HTML article even mentioned XHTML more than one time.—mjb 19:53, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Ok. But I'm going to change the wording in the section about XHTML. XML descends from SGML more than HTML does, not the other way around, which is what the section sounds like to me. And since XHTML decends from both (really), it also descends from SGML. I am also going to make the point that HTML could easily descend from XML, and in the future, according to the W3, it will. Jaxad0127 20:06, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
XML descends from SGML more than HTML does – ??? I don't see how you arrived at that conclusion. XML is inspired by SGML, but is its own thing. XML and SGML both define general markup conventions and requirements for processors that read that markup. HTML and XHTML are so-called "applications" of SGML and XML, respectively: HTML is defined by SGML DTDs and processing rules/semantics that distinguish HTML from SGML in general. Similarly, XHTML is an application of XML: it is defined by XML DTDs and processing rules/semantics that distinguish it from XML in general. —mjb 21:59, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
When they made XML, they were adressing the limitations of HTML. And instead of extending HTML, they went back to SGML and made a new language, HTML wasn't originally made from SGML. XML was. Jaxad0127 22:54, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
Here are some pages, from the W3, to back me up:
History of HTML
The only mention of SGMl is that some people were using it to markup documents.
First XML draft
I quote: "Extensible Markup Language (XML) is an extremely simple dialect of SGML ..."
Jaxad0127 23:05, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
OK, I stand corrected re: XML's relationship to SGML. It is a subset of SGML after all. For the relationship of HTML to SGML though, I suggest you read the HTML spec. From the abstract: "HTML 4 is an SGML application"; and then there's section 3 and HTML's SGML DTD.—mjb 23:41, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
I know. The points I'm trying to make are that HTML isn't the only language to descend from SGML and that HTML wasn't originally made with SGML in mind. Jaxad0127 01:55, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I think the problem is merely that the term HTML is pointing to multiple things: 1) HTML as a syntactic language; and 2) HTML as a semantic content specification. As a semantic content specification one could readily call anything html that for example: 1) descended from SGML or was like SGML; 2) had an SGML like root element named "HTML"; and 3) adhered to a content model of the strict DTD. This is just an example, but here both XHTML 1.0 strict and HTML 4.01 strict meet those criteria. In fact there's one place where W3 uses HTML regardless of the DTD in the name of the root element.
I can understand wanting to keep the distinction clear (as the W3 certainly does), but the way to do that is not to necessarily have two different articles on Wikipedia, but to talk explicitly about the differences. The way these two articles were when I first saw them doesn't help keep the distinction it maintains a false dichotomy between them. My efforst were to try to clearly draw out the similarities and differences so a reader would walk away with a clearer understanding. --Cplot 22:30, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
At this point, I don't object to the reorg or the attention being given to the article, in general, but I don't think the reader is going to come away any less confused. If anything, adding so many references to XHTML makes it difficult to understand what non-XHTML HTML is about. —mjb 23:41, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] HTML, XHTML, XML and their relation to SGML

I don't know enough about SGML to say anything definitive on this, but from what I can tell, the differences between SGML on the one hand and HTML and XML on the other hand are quite subtle and esoteric. Does anyone know precisely how HTML or XML adhere to or violate the SGML specifications? I could certainly see how both XML (and therfore XHTML) and HTML (4.01 and earlier) both could be considered applications of SGML, just in slighly different directions. Of course if either HTML or XML violate anything in the SGML specification, then it would be imprecise to say it is an application of SGML but rrather a variation on SGML would be more correct.

Even if both are applications of SGML, the way I had thought of it was that HTML and XML descend directly from SGML while XHTML descends from XML So in that case it would still be fair to differntiate the SGML based HTML from the XML based HTML (XHTML). --Cplot 22:30, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Right. But older versions of this article made it sound like XML, and there fore XHTML, didn't derrive from SGML. If you want to put SGML back in there, the please use the word directly with it. Jaxad0127 23:02, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Change of dialect

Charles Gaudette has just gone through and made lots of changes to the spelling of words to change the dialect of this article to American English.

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style says:

If an article is predominantly written in one type of English, aim to conform to that type rather than provoking conflict by changing to another. (Sometimes, this can happen quite innocently, so please do not be too quick to make accusations!)

I propose that the spelling changes be reverted. If changes that contravene this guideline aren't reverted, then there's no point in having that rule to begin with, because people can simply change the dialect to suit their wishes and articles will be left that way.

What do other people think? --Bogtha 17:58, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the intent of the guideline is to make the article's "original" dialect canon, or to imply that it's "wrong" for someone to come along and change an article to a different regional convention. Rather, I think it's more just to ensure consistency and thus minimize the temptation for someone to redo spellings throughout an article. So, you shouldn't use the guideline as an excuse to revert the changes (assuming they were applied consistently), citing the original convention as "correct" according to the MoS. Arguably, especially around here, people should be quite used to seeing various spellings. There are usually much more substantive changes that can be made to an article; one wonders why people feel the need to leave their mark in such inconsequential ways.—mjb 05:46, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Another excellent HTML resource

Web Browser HTML Support Great resource for checking what works in what browser --70.28.63.102 18:10, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] sorry about the spelling errors

Sorry about the spelling errors and thanks to mjb, LLarson and others for catching them. I'm going to use a spell checker from now on :-). --Cplot 20:36, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] reorganization

I'd like to propose a reorganization of the existing article. As often occurs the section have been added in no particular order and with little structure to guide the reader. For reference, here's the current structure.

  1. Version history of the standard
  2. HTML markup
    1. Elements
    2. Attributes
    3. Other markup
  3. Flavors of HTML
  4. The Document Type Definition
  5. Separation of style and content
  6. Publishing HTML with HTTP
  7. HTML e-mail
  8. HTML as a hypertext format
  9. See also
  10. External links
    1. W3C Specifications
    2. Selected tutorials and guides
    3. Validators

I propose consolidating and rearranging a bit:

  1. HTML markup
    1. The Document Type Definition (adding discussion of DTD as the defining language for specifying HTML entities)
    2. Elements
    3. Attributes
    4. Other markup
  2. Separation of style and content (possibly rename: "Semantic HTML" or "Semantic Web" or somehow bringing these terms into the section.)
  3. Delivery of HTML
    1. Publishing HTML with HTTP
    2. HTML e-mail
    3. Other delivery (discussing e.g., printed html, optical disks, standard file sharing, etc.)
  4. History of HTML
    1. Version history of the standard (perhaps adding more historical commentary on the various specifications).
    2. Flavors of HTML (rename "Current flavors of HTML")
    3. HTML as a hypertext format (placed here to contextualize the development of HTML as one of many hypertext markup languages.
    4. Future directions (this could discuss XHTML 2 and possibly the splintering into HTML 5 if others think this is relevant)
  5. See also ...

I think this improves the flow of the text nicely. I think it's common in the wiki articles I'm familiar with to include a 'history of' section after the 'what it is' sections. Any thoughts? --Cplot 21:10, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and did this reorganization. I added some discussions of both history and semantic HTML to round out what was there. I also decided to leave the flavors section as its own section rather than make it the first subsection section of the "history of html section". I think it's too long for that. Please take a look at the Semantic HTML section and make sure that discussion is clear enough. I'd hate for the meanting to be lossed in a section on meaning :-).. Seriously, though it could probably use some second opinions. --Cplot 22:14, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] note to mjb on character entity references

I wanted to explain why I brought the discussion back in (hopefully clearer this time). I wasn't trying to argue in favor of named character references over numbered character references. Rather I just wanted to include the information that unicode drastically removes the need for character references of any stripe. Except in those cases I mentioned (and maybe a few others I forgot). I imagine even the non-breaking space doesn't belong there. There's probably an easy way to get that unicode character from the keyboard (though I don't know it). So as an example, before unicode typing a greek letter gamma required a character reference entity like: γ (&gamma;). With unicode one can simply just type an gamma: ɣ (you need to examine the markup to see the difference). It may actually be easier to type the character reference for the most familiar easy to remember characters, but once the author needs to make a lookup, the unicode encoded character is just as fast. So with unicode, the character references become a convenient mnemonic, but aren't as crucial as when there was no way to encode a character into the document. Regardless of the new method of encoding characters, there remains a absolute need (not just for convenience) for the few characters reserved for special use within HTML (the ones I mentioned in that section except non-breaking space). Perhaps more of this needs to be explained in the article, but I'm not totally certain what specifically needs clarification. I hope I've at least made it clearer here. --Cplot 21:26, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

  1. ɣ is Latin gamma, not Greek gamma (γ).
  2. Unicode is only mentioned in the HTML specs in relation to bidi text processing. It's actually a fairly large subset of ISO/IEC 10646 (the UCS), not Unicode, that HTML 4 is based on. That is, HTML defines (most of) the UCS as its "document character set" — a deceptive SGML term for the repertoire of abstract characters that a document consists of, regardless of their encoding — as being the atomic pieces of an HTML document. Prior to HTML 4, it was a subset of the repertoire of the ISO-8859-1 encoding that was the HTML document character set.
  3. Numeric character references and character entity references can only refer to characters from the document character set. So, HTML 4.0 was the first to introduce the ability to use numeric character references above #255. Until 4.0, the number referred to the ISO-8559-1 character at that code point. Since 4.0, the number refers to the UCS character at that code point. &gamma;, since it refers to a character well beyond 255, was not available in HTML 3.2 and earlier.
  4. Unicode/the UCS, per se, does not "enable" one to type any particular literal character. In any text document, anyone can enter any literal character if the document's encoding and whatever's reading/displaying the document support it. For example, I can't type a literal ɣ or γ in a Windows-1252 encoded document, but I can type a literal γ in an ISO-8859-7 document, and I can type both characters in a UTF-7 or UTF-8 document. The HTML version doesn't matter — it was quite possible to use UTF-7 and UTF-8 prior to HTML 4 — although, as I said, characters beyond U+00FF are not supposed to be present in pre-4.0 documents. In practice, however, browsers offered support for HTML documents in many different encodings, and fully allowed such documents to contain characters from the whole of those encodings, well beyond the ISO-8859-1 repertoire. So it was not uncommon to encounter, say, ISO-2022-JP text labeled as ISO-8859-1 (or not labeled at all), and Japanese users would normally force their browsers to use the right encoding. So you're right in a sense; HTML didn't officially "support" most characters until the UCS became the document character set, and its support for those characters does mean that people are allowed to enter them literally, but you're wrong in your implicit assumption that people always had the option of using NCRs or character entity refs in the meantime, or that encodings supporting unusual characters, including Unicode encodings like UTF-8, weren't usable earlier.

Anyway, as of a couple days ago, I've rewritten that section to address the topic without making incorrect statements/assumptions. It now simply describes the char ref markup and what it's for, and gives some simpler examples. nbsp and gt were bad examples, as there's nothing special about them; and the specialness of quot is slightly esoteric to a newcomer. If we're to add another example, I'd like it to be one that uses lt and amp, as their specialness is easiest to grok. In the datatype discussion I dropped the CDATA/PCDATA bit because that's highly esoteric and is less relevant than the higher-level types like script (pretty much the only place where CDATA is relevant) and stylesheet data. —mjb 23:26, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply on that; that's helpful. I like the suggestion of the &amp; and &lt; references. Thtat's what I was trying to get at there (not sure what made me include &nbsp;). The point I was trying to make (aznd maybe my language wasn't precise enough) was that the improvement of UCS and Unicode tools in applications and operating systems means that there are ways of entering characters from the UCS that don't involve character reference entities. But even with these other ways of entering characters, there are, to my knowledge, still three character references thtat are indispensible: lt, gt, and amp. Also I think the named character references have mnemonic benefits where it would be faster to type the reference than to turn to some character palette to insert the character. I think that thrust is still in the article after your edits. --Cplot 23:51, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
The gt entity is not special; an unescaped ">" is never confused with markup. People just like to use it to balance out the "&lt"s when they put markup examples in HTML. :) Even &lt; and &amp; aren't indispensible. You could always use their corresponding NCRs (and that's what happens in the DTDs that define the amp entity).
I agree re: the mnemonic benefits of named entities, but I'm not sure that's something that belongs in the article. We have to avoid "original research", so I'm hesitant to embrace any kind of speculation about benefits/drawbacks without at least some confidence that we could cite some sources where such assessments were made. However, one thing that I know is documented (I believe on Alan Wood's site) is that Netscape used to mistakenly treat NCRs as references to bytes in the page's actual encoding, rather than as references to code points in the UCS. So for a while, being Netscape 4 compatible meant avoiding NCRs altogether! —mjb 04:47, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to add: I think if you're really looking for ways to improve the HTML article, have a look at the recent work we did on the XML article, particularly the Features of XML section, wherein I tried to concisely introduce the terms character, document, entity, and encoding, which are referred to later in the "syntax tour" that introduces the higher-level markup terms like element, attribute, character data and so forth, plus examples. Quite a lot of the material there is applicable to HTML, not just XML, so you could draw some material from there. I'm also proud of the Discussion section of the numeric character reference article, which covers some of the same ground in more detail. I just beefed up the SGML entity article, as well; it may be of interest (though it could stand some peer review from an SGML expert, as it's XML-centric at the moment). The Character encodings in HTML article is an offshoot of the Unicode article (it used to be a section within that one); I'm not a big fan of it, but it might have some material you can draw from as well. Just bear in mind that we need to keep this article focused on HTML and what researchers (journalists, grandma, COBOL programmers) really need to know about it, without getting too deep into the subtopics that have their own articles, and without turning it into a complete tutorial. Again, the XML article might be a good example.—mjb 06:57, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Talk archive moved

I have moved the talk archive from HTML/Archive 1 to Talk:HTML/Archive 1. Archives belong in the talk namespace, not in the article namespace, since they are not articles. Gavia immer 19:13, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

Whoops, my mistake. Thanks for catching that. —mjb 19:37, 30 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Future directions section needed

A mere external link to the XHTML 2.0 working draft in the version history of the standard section and an external link to Web Applications 1.0 do not do justice to the directions the W3C and other groups like the Web Hypertext Applications Working Group are trying to take with HTML and XHTML. XHTML 2, for example, makes some radical changes beyond the more cautious XHTML 1 specifications. Web Applications 1.0 introduces some very useful new features intended for Web applications that do not fit well into the traditional document mold, which XHTML 2 will greatly enhance. Features like canvas (implemented in Mozilla Firefox and Safari already), calendar, menu, datagrid, etc. may become very useful for future Web developers.--NeantHumain 08:27, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

For some reason there's another separate article on XHTMLthat discusses XHTML 1.1 and 2. I definitely think the W3C are doing some great work. However, the more I browse the WhatWG website, the more I think its someone who is just trend-spotting. The proposals of things that aree innovative are just rehash of someone else's deas. The proposals that are unique are steps in the wrong direction. Why would we want RTF in our web applications? Why would we want to alter browsers to work with new HTML form controls to avoid altering browsers to work with the new more advanced XForms controls? Also by calling their work XHTML 5 or HTML 5 it also produces FUD about the work of the W3C, suggessting someone else might have moved things farther along. Finally they do damage by suggesting this supposed dichotomy between the "impractical" W3C (which I see as very practical and very effective at garnering concensus) and the practical WhatWG (which from looking at their webpage, suggests practical means: to lack substance). --Cplot 15:36, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
Despite opinions about the nature of WHATWG, it is, nevertheless, a concerted movement to expand HTML and XHTML beyond what is currently being done in the W3C and therefore deserves mention in the article. Also, it has members from the Mozilla Foundation, Opera, and Apple Computer. In my honest opinion, the WHATWG is mostly just a group to give some sort of standards backing to non-W3C extensions like canvas and the rest of the specification is more an afterthought. However, Web Applications 1.0 is still mentioned across the Internet [6], [7] (and more commonly as HTML5 than by its official name, from my personal experience). Perhaps the biggest difference between the W3C and WHATWG is that Microsoft is not involved in the latter (which is probably for the best given their spotty implementation of CSS and the DOM in IE6 that has been holding Web developers back).
I know the final specification of Web Applications 1.0 will have to abandon the term XHTML5 because the W3C has that trademarked. HTML isn't, though, and they may continue calling it that to avoid the more cumbersome full term.
Ideally, I think it would be best to see many of these features incorporated into XHTML 2.0 as a Web Applications module. I know some of the proposals, including extensions to the DOM, would reduce code writing significantly if Microsoft ever caught up and the old versions became unused.--NeantHumain 01:18, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
I'm still wondering about XHTML5. There isn't even a version 2 yet, not to mention 3 or 4. The point is is that it's unofficial. If it gets mentioned at all, that should be made quite clear. Who knows, the W3 might implement their changes in the future, but for the time being, they're not to be taken as official and most browsers probably won't support them until they are. For the time being, they're just browser-specific extensions, like the layer tags in Netscape and IE filter style atributes. If we're going to mention them, we should also mention every other browser-specific extension, and that would greatly increase the size of the article. Jaxad0127 02:24, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

My point about WhatWG was not simply to render an opinion about what it is, but to say that its inclusion here should be toned down from the rhetoric for which they use to describe themselves. It will only confuse readers to call it XHTML 5 or HTML 5 or anything other than WebApplications 1.0. The other names make people think (as is examplefied by this thread) that they see themselves as supplanting rather than working with the W3C. Also to discuss ruture directions one could simply point to the specific features of WhatWG that are prposed for the future of HTML/XHTML. I myself am curious becausee other than the canvas (and I don't see how the canvas is any different than HTMLs “object” element) the other proposals mentioned are already part of W3C recommendations (or late drafts close to recommendation. And I faile to see where Microsoft has had any substantive negative impact on the recommendations of the W3C (though their refusual to adopt simple yet crucial portions of the specification certainly contsitute an obstacle, but I'm talking about the recommendation documents themselves). --Cplot 23:47, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] W3Schools

Would this be good to add to tutorials? I've found it to be rather complete and thorough.

I took a look at the site and i don't think its very helpful. It's quite dated material. Many things are done with HTML style elements and attributes that would be better done with CSS: for example the body background color. From what I could see, there is no mention of CSS at all. Also the tutorial is focussed largely on the transitional DTD when it would be better to focus beginners on the strict DTD, turning to transitional when necessary. --Cplot 20:33, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] clarified XHTM / HTML relationship

I clarified this relationship because I think it could prove deceptive to unfamiliar readers in the old version which read:

"As such, many consider XHTML to be the "current version" of HTML, but it is a separate, parallel standard; the W3C continues to recommend the use of either XHTML 1.1, XHTML 1.0, or HTML 4.01 for web publishing."

First, I think this implies the W3C has a procedure to de-rcommend its recommendation, or at least that it does that regularly. I'm unfamiliar with any procedure and cannot recall a time when this has happened. If someone can introduce some citations that support this procedure then we should probably re-clarify my clarification. Internet Explorer has problems with XHTML and that's why it is recommended to serve XHTML as HTML if IE is among the user-agents consuming the content. As far as I can tell, no one would even be talking about HTMl 4.01 if Microsoft had the resources to support modern standards.

There's also confusion over the distinction between HTML/XHTMl syntactically verses HTML/XHTML as a mime type, but that's another issues that probably needs clarification in the article. --Cplot 03:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

"I think this implies the W3C has a procedure to de-rcommend its recommendation," what about the earlier HTML recommendations? Newwer recomendations take precedent over older ones. Jaxad0127 05:14, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
Newer recommendations take precedent over older ones
No, that's not the position of the standards bodies. Newer publications "take precedence" only if they say they do. HTML 4.01 explicitly "supersedes" HTML 4.0. XHTML 1.0 does not supersede HTML 4.01. Likewise, XHTML 1.1 does not supersede XHTML 1.0.
I think this implies the W3C has a procedure to de-recommend its recommendation
They haven't used it yet, but, as of 2003 or so, they do actually have a process for publishing a "Rescinded Recommendation" [8]. What typically happens though is a Recommendation will become "deprecated", "superseded", "replaced", or rendered "obsolete" by an explicit statement made in some other Recommendation. Each of these terms has a slightly different meaning. "Rescinded" is a bit drastic; I can see why they haven't used it yet.
HTML 4.01 has not been rescinded, nor do any other specifications designate themselves as its replacement. The index page http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/ prominently promotes as "Recommendations" HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1 (+Modularization of XHTML, XHTML Basic, and XML Events), while referring to HTML 4.0, 3.2, 2.0 as "previous versions of HTML" marked superseded / historic. XHTML is also mentioned there as being the "successor" of HTML but this appears to me to be an indicator of the direction of W3C activity, not the status of the HTML Recommendations themselves; the XHTML specs themselves make it clear they've only built upon the history of HTML.
I've rephrased the intro again and expanded it quite a bit with references to support my position. I actually had to revise my position somewhat upon digging up the references. I ended up restoring the "successor" comment that I railed against earlier, though I heavily qualified it this time.
Other parts of the article that go into depth about XHTML will need some adjustment and pruning. The XHTML article will also need to be updated accordingly. —mjb 21:10, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

mjb, the changes look good. I think it definitely clarifies things further and provides some nice references to the W3C on the matter. Thanks. --Cplot 06:25, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] removed template for separate article flor: HTML e-mail

The disucssion of separating the subsection into its own article should precede the placement of the template. If no one can think of any good reasons and articluate them here on the discussion page, then the template has no place on the main article. I cannot think of any reason that such a small subsection would even need to be split from the main article. --Cplot 16:57, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you. Its small enough to keep in this article. If it were to double in size, or something, it could be split off, but for now, it should be kept. Jaxad0127 19:53, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

It should be split off because it is a subject in its own right; it has nothing to do with the section's size. Does this section best belong in email or in HTML? The answer is neither; it belongs in its own article. There are people who absolutely hate HTML email and think it should be banned, and people who use it every day in professional communication. There are pros and cons, comparisons to plain text, formats used by different software, attempts at standardization, etc. Lots to cover, and it won't be added if it's just a little subsection in another article. — Omegatron 21:26, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

The way the section is now, it doesn't warrent a split. If you can gather more info, create a new article and the section on this page could be an extension of it. But until it's larger, it should be left. And we only removed the template after about two hours after you included it each time. That was plenty of time to start a discussion. Jaxad0127 21:44, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
No one's going to add more info to it until it's a separate article. Can you think of any valid reason why it shouldn't be one?
The template should not be removed until the discussion has reached a consensus. — Omegatron 23:24, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
So start another article with all the additional info you talked about. We removed the template because there was no discussion. Jaxad0127 23:27, 11 September 2006 (UTC)


Well why didn't you just say why you wanted a separate article in the first place :-). Could you provide a reference to the rule that says the template comes first and then the discussion follows. I imagine there's something to that, but the editor introducing the template needs to provide some explanattion here before hand other wise the template is inaccurate ("t has been suggested that this section be split into a new article. (Discuss)"). How can anyone discuss what's on your mind if you dont at tleast write a brief summary of what's on your mind. Personally, I think its bad form to introduce something like a template on any article without at least making some comment on the discussion page. Many novices may not understand the importance of the discussion pages, but certainly once someone's become familiar with templates they must be aware of the discussion page too.

I think you make some good points here now. I worry at times that Wikipedia editors are to eager to split off sections into new articles. The fact that some people are passsionate about HTML’s use in email is not grounds on its own however. Wikipedia is more a place to explain what it is (with pros and cons), but not a place to hold extended discussions back and forth about what's good and bad about it. I think the current subsection does a decent job of explaining those pros and cons without going into extended debate.

Another alternative would be to include clear links to each of the relevant sections of the "email" article from the HTML section and one from the HTML section to a relevant section of the email article. --Cplot 00:53, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I did say why it should be a separate article.
Could you provide a reference to the rule that says that discussion-requesting templates should be deleted on sight multiple times without discussion?
The current section is just a back and forth debate about the reasons people are passionate about HTML's use in email and how it's "controversial". We need an article about what it is, how it is used, what formats different programs use, etc. — Omegatron 01:51, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
When you add a template involving discussion, you need to add the initial discussion. We waited two hours each time before removing it. Point out the peice of policy that states discussion isn't needed for those templates. Jaxad0127 03:15, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Omegatron, I agree that the current section is a bit too back and forth pro and con. Perhaps you could contribute something to ijmjproving the section and then if it grows to large to remain a subsection we could split it off. I use plaintext,, RTF and HTML rgularly and I'm not sure what else we should say about the technology as it is. I'm not sayin there's not more that could be siad, just that I'm not sure what to say. . --Cplot 02:30, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Nevermind. — Omegatron 05:06, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Markup languages are not protocols

The current page contains three sentences:

  1. "Since its inception HTML and its associated protocols gained acceptance relatively quickly. ..."
  2. "The major problems occur when software is non-conforming to HTML 4.01 and its associated protocols to begin with, or erroneously implements the XHTML and XML protocols. ..."
  3. "Tim Berners-Lee created the original HTML (and many of the associated protocols such as HTTP) ..."

I do not recommend that the word "protocol" be used in this way in an encyclopedia. XHTML and HTML are markup languages, and XML is a meta-language, neither should be described as a protocol. A protocol such as HTTP delivers the marked-up data. — Pádraig Coogan 13:34, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

A similar concern was raised on Talk:Uniform Resource Identifier#Introduction revision proposal. My response there was "It sounds like you're under the impression that protocol means network communication standard. That's the most common kind of protocol, but the term actually has a broader definition, and it is not inaccurate or restrictive to say that a URI is an Internet protocol element." – or in this case, that standards relating to the transmission and interpretation of HTML/XHTML constitute 'protocols'.
In the examples you cited above, I believe the term is referring to both the network-bound protocol HTTP and email – or more specifically, the protocols that involve tagging data with one of the HTML/XHTML/XML-related MIME types like text/html, application/xml, application/*+xml, application/x-www-form-urlencoded, multipart/form-data, and so on, and interpreting it accordingly. These protocols are not necessarily network bound, and are not limited to HTTP. Examples include the standards that cover HTML email, HTML delivered via a URI resolver, de facto standards like assuming content types based on file name extensions, etc.
IMHO, only the 2nd example, where it says "XHTML and XML protocols", is troublesome/misleading. The other instances seem to use 'protocol' to refer to standard delivery methods like HTTP, which I think suits your definition of the term, and further clarification isn't needed, but maybe we can cook something up. —mjb 14:35, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
It is true that 1) and 3) do not state what the second half of 2) does unambiguously. As long as "erroneously implements the XHTML and XML protocols" remains there, though, the non-specialist may misread the other parts. I suggest "erroneously implements the XHTML and XML specifications" as a modest improvement. — Pádraig Coogan 15:22, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
What if we add "and related protocols" (like the firsdt two have) to keep the same emaning without being ambiguous. Jaxad0127 16:56, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm OK with either of those. I suggest just making the edits, and if it's still not clear, we'll edit it some more. :) —mjb 19:00, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I went ahead and changed the "protocls" in 2) to "recommendations". The other two (1 and 3) do not seem at all incorrect to me. I think part of the problem is coming up with a term that's not "standard", "speciication" or "recommendation" — since these all have specific formal meanings — for the set of rules governing how a useer-agent is to interpret, validate, render, etc (pre-recommendation) HTML (in Java they call this an interface; in Objective-C they call it a protocol). As is suggested above, It also may just be a reader that has a specific preconception about what the term protocol means that doesn't conform to its broader generalized use. --Cplot 22:21, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Status of errata

Today I changed the way I phrased the acknowledgment of 2001 as the last date of activity on the HTML spec. I had previously said that the HTML 4.01 Recommendation was published in 1999 and "last updated" in 2001, but I saw a recent post on the XForms list that made me realize that unless they say otherwise, errata do not necessarily constitute normative "updates" to a Recommendation. They might not even be more than mere acknowledgments of issues and errors. As of 2006, the errata document makes no statement one way or the other.

According to the W3C's Technical Report Development Process, an errata document must clearly indicate the status of each item, and the Working Group must apply any conformance-affecting errata toward the production of a Proposed Edited Recommendation—culminating in, for example, an HTML 4.01 Second Edition.[9] However, these details of the Recommendation-editing process didn't come into effect until June 2003, and as of 2006, have not been retroactively applied (or even followed to the letter at all, AFAIK).

I still think it's important to acknowledge the errata and the fact that the HTML Working Group was still working on HTML as late as 2001, so I've changed the phrasing to say HTML 4.01 was "published in late 1999 and its issues and errors were last acknowledged by errata published in 2001". —mjb 23:03, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I think it needs some rewording, as the errata doesn't only contain errors (it also has editorials, document issues, clarifications and document problems). I propose this wording:
The last HTML specification published by the W3C is the HTML 4 Recommendation, published in late 1999. It has an errata, published in 2001, containing errors and clarifications.
Thoughts? Jaxad0127 23:25, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
I was hoping to avoid interjecting another sentence for the errata between the mention of HTML 4.01's publication and the shift to XHTML, but it might be unavoidable. I have to get out my red pen for your proposed rewording, anyway, though: avoid using "published" in reference to the same publication twice in one sentence; and errata is plural of erratum, so "an" errata is grammatically incorrect. Aside from those copy edits, the errata document was updated as recently as 2005, but the errata items within it were added in both 2000 and 2001, so "published in 2001" is imprecise. How about this:
The HTML 4.01 Recommendation, published in late 1999, and the HTML 4 Errata, last substantively updated in 2001, are (as of 2006) the most recent and final HTML specification documents published by the W3C.
Also, I just noticed this: the URL http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html4-updates/errata (emphasis mine) implies that the errata do constitute updates to the Recommendation *facepalm* :) —mjb 15:35, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. Jaxad0127 03:48, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] HTML for kids

We need a kid's explanation of this. --Pupster21 14:37, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

The rarely-edited Simple English version of Wikipedia has a HTML article. Rufous 12:10, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] HTML Wikia

What do you think about adding a link under the 'See also' section to the HTML Wikia? I think it would be a benefit since it groups all of the small, misc HTML information into one Wiki site. HTML Wikia Answerthis 15:47, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

I would say certainly not, at this early stage of that wiki's development. Rufous 12:11, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
Roger. Answerthis 15:27, 11 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Recent elaboration in lead section

While I think the information recently added to the lead section helps a bit, It's way too much detail for the lead section. i'm referring to the material regarding what developments have occured surrounding HTML 4.01 over the last decade. I think it best belongs to the history section, but perhaps the history section should be brought up toward the top of the article. I'll see what I can do to fix this. --Cplot 03:33, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Experimenting with organization is fine, but I really don't like the phrasing of "HTML whether in its XML based XHTML variant or in its SGML based variant." You keep wanting to characterize XHTML as a "variant" of HTML, but "variant" is effectively the same as "version" or "type". XHTML is not a type, version or variant of HTML. I had carefully worded and cited W3C sources in the paragraph that introduces the topic of XHTML so that it would not make or reinforce that common assumption. I would have liked to also invest the time needed to do the same for the "Traditional vs. XML-based HTML" section (your addition, no?) that comes later in the article. IMHO that section is completely unnecessary… —mjb 05:11, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
Also, XML is also descends from SGML. The current wording makes it sound otherwise. Jaxad0127 14:01, 13 October 2006 (UTC)
XHTML 1.0 has the exact same content model as HTML 4.01. In other words the element and attribute names are exactly the same (except for the name change of lang to xml:lang). The semantics asribed to those elements and attributes are exactly the same. The child elements are exactly the same for each and every element. I find it difficult to understand how that doesn't constiutute variants of of the same markup specification. That doesn't suggest that one is necessarily going to go away, or that one historically comes before the other: clearly xhtml 1.0 and html 4.01 were developed in unison. So I don't think there's anything wrong with referring to them as variants of html.
On the issue of calling html 4.01 and earlier SGML based and XHTML 1.0 and later XML based, I'm also having a hard time understanding the issue.: though XML is indeed SGML based. I can understand how it could fail to correct a misconception about that, but I don't think it adds to those misconceptions. I welcome any language that would clarify that.
In adding that paragraph I was merely trying to address the missing usage of the term HTML that a reader might be confused about if its not addressed. --Cplot 17:10, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Looking this over again, I honestly do not understand the objections to the use of the term variant. Mjb, could you elaborate on why you don't see HTML and XHTML as two different versions of HTML? Especially with the recent research you've done on this where you (I believe it was you) wrote that the W3C has exclusively devoted all its attention to XHTML since 2002. Of course HTML 4.01 will continue to work in all of the existing browsers, but new features will be brought to newer XHTML versions. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Cplot (talk • contribs).


[edit] Nice picture

Maybe it would be good to include the nice picture HTML_element_structure.png‎ from the article "HTML element" near the top of this article about HTML and create a similar picture for the article about XML. The figure is really instructive. Ajgorhoe 23:23, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Please, please, can we have the font tag disabled?

Seriously. It brings all kind of problems, users around here love to use it on their signatures incorrectly leading to broken markup, and W3C recommends NOT to use it. Ever.

It also doesn't bring anything good to Wp. XHTML (which is what MediaWiki uses) separates content from presentation. People should use CSS instead of <font>.--Saoshyant talk / contribs (I don't like Wikipedophiles) 10:45, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

P.S: I know this is about the HTML article, and not about Wp policy, but I don't know where to take this issue.

Inline styles are even worse than the font tag since they have less backwards compatibility, more bloat and still mix style with content. Proper css is already used where appropriate but can imo never fully replace the use of inline formatting. Plugwash 11:15, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Minor Changes

Changed

  1. Including explicit close tags for elements that permit content but are left empty (for example, "", not "" )

to

  1. Including explicit close tags for elements that permit content but are left empty (for example, "<img></img>", not "<img />" )

Because having an empty paragraph is redundant, better to use div for block elements that self close.

Ryan "Boxxertrumps" Trumpa No, Im Not Related To Donald Trump.

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