Grips about HTML

May 5, 2011 6:43am CST
This is a discussion that is going to cover the things I hate about HTML which some of which are the reason for how long it is taking for XHTML 3 to come about (from what I have heard). To set the record straight, in a nutshell the whole point of XHTML is to store information in a structured way so that it can be parsed by an XML engine (and then eventually turned into human readable information one way or another). Therefore, XHTML is the lowest level of abstraction and this is why XHTML is data. It has long been said that XHTML is information, CSS is presentation and JavaScript provides a means of making the information dynamic and all 3 layers should be kept separate as it makes more sense to separate them from a long list of perspectives that I won't bother going into. My first gripe with XHTML is the br element, the whole purpose of this element is to break a line of information onto another line which I consider to be presentational. If you take the presentation out of the br element then the br element is meaningless. The same can't be said about the hr element as it actually is there to identify where information should be considered separate, such as a page header and footer for instance. My second gripe is with the a element, commonly known as a link but is also an anchor within a page. You can use the a element to link to a certain area of a page or another page. You can also use the a element as an anchor within a page and this is where my second gripe begins. What is the point of adding an anchor that relates to nothing? Surely it would be better to place an anchor on a heading, image or some other form of information/media opposed to just adding anchors randomly within a page. Another gripe I have is with the img element, it annoys me to no end that an image is just another form of media and therefore doesn't need it's own special element, why not just use the object element with parameter elements? Another gripe I have is the head element, which is actually a pain as pretty much all web pages have headers and the head element has nothing to do with the header, this causes ambiguity. My final gripe is with the input, textarea, select and option elements. WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE? They are all "fields" within a form! I know in XHTML 3 this is set to change but it is taking so long. I hope it is just me lacking in knowledge here or maybe I have missed something but surely I can't be the only person with these gripes?
1 response
@damnsam (67)
• India
14 May 11
dude, you seem to be the only one with such gripes...Please try to look at the glass half full and not empty. I agree to some of your points as they are logical but the most important thing is that the tags have been around for years and just getting rid of them all of a sudden could break a lot of old code and that my friend is popularly known as backwards compatibility and that's the reason those tags exist. Maybe in future, things become and behave the way you wish them to but the older ones will still have to be there for compatibility reasons.