General comment on proposed HTML 5.
As you ponder the future versions of HTML, I urge you to keep in mind that
many people who need to write web pages are very low-level users who
neither want nor need anything like the subtleties of CSS. In fact, they
will refuse to learn it.
The html authors I have in mind are people like my colleagues, faculty at
the University of Pennsylvania, who frequently need to write basic web
pages with their homework assignments or other data about their courses.
For these users, primitive html tags such as
<font> <align> <bgcolor>,
all of which are _deprecated_ in HTML 4.01, are the most complicated tags
these users will ever learn. Many even don't want to even learn these.
To see what I mean, look at a few web pages for a random selection of
courses at any college or university.
While the control and splendors of CSS are vital to professional web page
designers, users like my colleagues don't want to be web page designers.
In fact, they simply refuse to learn much at all about HTML -- since their
needs are already met by a very few tags in ancient versions of HTML.
They have completely different priorities. They simply want to be able to
communicate to their targeted audience -- clearly and with a minimal
learning curve. Removing the possibility of using primitive HTML markup
tags would be a real mistake. They will simply stop writing web pages.
For their needs, ancient HTML is not broken and should be retained as an
option.
Experts at web page design should appreciate that there are many classes
of users whose web page authoring needs are far different from those whose
professional lives require sharper CSS tools. While it is essential to
develop these sharper tools, one should not deny the possibility to use
more primitive tools.
Thanks for listening.
Yours
Jerry Kazdan
Chair, Computer Committee
--
Jerry L. Kazdan, Professor of Mathematics
David Rittenhouse Lab, Room 4E15 Telephone: (215) 898-5109
University of Pennsylvania, http://www.math.upenn.edu/~kazdan/
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6395
