Don't forget that while W3C may (or may not) decide that B and I are no longer appropriate to keep in the standards, user-agents that maintain compatibility with older standards will continue to work. The "elimination" of a tag will be a slow process, if it can ever be completed at all; all that promulgation of new standards does is define "current best practices", and user-agents that conform to them /without/ continuing to support older practices (I am not aware of /any/ user-agents that actually do this) can do no more than encourage (not mandate) that page editors (both human and software) use the new standards.
I happen to favor reducing the use of presentational (as opposed to semantic) tags; the separation of semantics (HTML) from presentation (CSS) made sense to me from the first. The process is an evolving one, though, and sometimes it may not be easy to decide whether a tag should be considered presentational or semantic, or there may be times that it actually makes more sense to keep a presentational tag. Remember, in some parts of the world, IE6 is still a way of life... On Sat, 15 Feb 2014 16:45:34 -0700, "Colin (Sandy) Pittendrigh" <sandy.pittendr...@gmail.com> wrote: >Interesting question. Much as I personally dislike them, web-app editors >like tinyMCE and FCK rely on tags like <b> and <i> and <font >color="whatever"> >I don't see why those programs couldn't be re-written to use <span >style="label:value;">. But it would cause some developers to jump around >quickly. > > >On Sat, Feb 15, 2014 at 3:47 PM, Ezequiel Garzón ><garzon.luc...@gmail.com>wrote: > >> Greetings to all, >> >> I know this is highly subjective question, but am curious as to what >> people think about this issue. Allow me to put forth a few questions, >> and you can pick all of any of them. When the WHATWG describes the I >> element as "a span of text in an alternate voice or mood", and the B >> element as "a span of text to which attention is being drawn for >> utilitarian purposes", I'm puzzled... wouldn't this be the role of a >> special class for the SPAN element? I'm actually glad I and B are >> "survivors", but seeing that U and S have been deprecated, it doesn't >> seem very consistent to keep these two one-letter elements around. >> And, going back to my main question, do you believe these two elements >> will be deprecated soon? >> >> Thank you in advance for any thoughts you may have on the matter. >> >> Best regards, >> >> Ezequiel >> ______________________________________________________________________ >> css-discuss [css-d@lists.css-discuss.org] >> http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d >> List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ >> List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html >> Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/ >> > > > >-- >/* Colin (Sandy) Pittendrigh >--oO0> */ >______________________________________________________________________ >css-discuss [css-d@lists.css-discuss.org] >http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d >List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ >List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html >Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/ -- Jeff Zeitlin, Editor Freelance Traveller The Electronic Fan-Supported Traveller® Fanzine and Resource edi...@freelancetraveller.com http://www.freelancetraveller.com http://come.to/freelancetraveller http://freelancetraveller.downport.com/ ®Traveller is a registered trademark of Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2009. Use of the trademark in this notice and in the referenced materials is not intended to infringe or devalue the trademark. Freelance Traveller extends its thanks to the following enterprises for hosting services: CyberNET Web Hosting (http://www.cyberwebhosting.net) The Traveller Downport (http://www.downport.com) ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [css-d@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
