Deprecated without good reason?
Just when I think I'm un-geek, I find myself getting all worked up over... the deprecation (phasing out) of perfectly serviceable html tags.
Apparnetly, in terms of html code (i.e. the stuff that formats web pages), the "center" tag has been deprecated. Thus, instead of using "center" and "slash-center" for centering something, it's now "div align="center" " and "slash-div". And instead of just putting "i" and "slash-i" around text you want to italicize, it's "span style="font-style: italic;" " and "slash-span".
Now, I don't mind **both** ways being equally valid. But, I don't like the notion of "upgrading" to a new way that achieve the same result, but in a more roundabout way. Seems like bad practice -- and evidence that everyone is using webpage-creating software, rather than coding by hand.
Any webby people out there with insights on this?
According to the deprecation article at Wikipedia, the usual reasons for deprecation are:
1) The feature has been replaced by a more powerful, alternative feature. Maybe more powerful, but also unnecessarily complex. Why not leave it as an alternative, for that task-specific function?
2) The feature contains a design flaw — frequently a security flaw — and so should be avoided, but existing code depends upon it. Could be, but I doubt it. (Anyone?)
3) The feature is considered extraneous, and will be removed in the future in order to simplify the system as a whole. Nope -- making it **more** complicated. (Although there was an example, under this reason, of the ''font'' element being phased out, due to Cascading Style Sheets. But I don't like the idea of being **forced** to use CSS...)
4) A future version of the software is planned to make major structural changes, which make it impossible (or impractical) to support older features. Doesn't seem **that** hard to let people "center" and "italicize" using the old-school way.
Again: seems to be webpage-creator-centric, versus those of us who bang together quickie pages by hand.
--GG
posted by Gye Greene @ 10:03 PM
5 Comments:
I received a video via email called helpdesk and ended up saving it. There's a line that says "Compared to the scroll, the book takes longer."
I can't tell you how many times I've heard that in different terms.
I like your style of writing.
The deprecation comes from a push to separate content from presentation. The idea is that if you want your page to be readable by things like screen readers for the blind, or other computer programs, it's nice if all of the "just making it look good" information is shuffled away into style attributes or (better yet) css files. It also makes programs that generate web pages easier to build and maintain.
It's one of those areas where things have to get more complicated before they get can more simple :-/.
Considering that most parsers just ignore standard XHTML syntax, I've never been a fan of the new style unless it accomplishes something useful to save time/etc. E.g., using <i> for italics works just fine; good luck getting the world to go along with the change (think: IPV6, the US and the metric system, etc). Same for <center>, however if it allows me to modify something via stylesheet use, then it might be useful. E.g., <span class="center"> is not that useful to me, but <p class="heading"> or <div id="mainHeading"> do wonders.
Standards are usually a collection of things that people ended up doing on a large-enough basis; I know of few standards that were implemented as a result of being "just a standard". Group use influences group use. ;-)
Don't you just love how Blogger states that, for comments, "you can use some HTML tags such as <b>, <i>, <a>"? Now, that's a standard! ;-)
Zirelda,
Thx for the compliment on my writing. :)
--GG
I don't get any of it. I am a dork. A dorky nerd. But not a geek, apparently.
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