August 20, 2002
Pandora’s box model.
See, you ask a simple question and someone, somewhere will oblige you with an explanation. To wit, Matthias Gutfeldt writes:
The major issue for us techno-geeks is the incompatibility of XFORMS and XFRAMES with the HTML forms and frames model. But for the proverbial “Joanne Average”, the issue is something completely different: This new version is complicated as hell and completely unmanageable. HTML4 was comparatively easy, and browsers were very forgiving, But this thing here — XForms, XFrames, CSS3… it’s a geek’s wet dream, and a normal person’s nightmare. And browsers are _required_ to be very strict about what they accept and what not. Unless someone creates sophisticated tools that allow the technically uninitiated Joanne Average to produce her “my flower arrangements” site like she used to, the self-published web will become an endangered species. More than two years after XHTML1 went public we still don’t have fully XHTML1-capable visual editors. It will probably take even longer until an XHTML2-capable publishing system is available — if it is possible at all to produce such a beast! Until then, Joanne Average won’t be able to produce much in the modern format. They set out to create a simple markup language that enabled people to communicate with each other. And now they’ve turned it into the “black box” complexity of a Microsoft Word document. It’s a pity. But I bet it’s good for us experts. :-)
I didn’t think the issue was as mundane as deprecated tags. And as Matthias points out, this could be quite the can of worms for the entry-level web publisher. It seems that the complexity of modern construction materials has taking away the ability to build a house using nothing but a hammer and saw. Perhaps it’s a bit harsh, but it’s apparent that the ability to create and communicate online content is being yanked out of the hands of the people. It’s the opposite of the increasing accessibility of desktop publishing tools in the late 80’s. Indulge me for a moment while I completely oversimplify the situation. What if XHTML2 could co-exist with a lightweight version of markup specifically for the novices and other non-techies out there? Go ahead and offer all the power of the advanced markup to professional developers and propellerheads with XForms, XFrames, and CSS3 and the like — but maintain some sort of humanoid readable, junior markup that can be easily generated by thin software tools or by hand. Oh wait a minute, that sounds like HTML4 doesn’t it? And we’re trying to get away from that, right? Aw, nuts.
This item was posted by .
Categories:
Leave a comment or send a trackback from your own site.