I was thinking about your stereotypical Angelfire / Tripod user, the "beginner hobbyist".
I think about them a *lot*. If it weren't for the ease of publishing, the web would not have taken off. Doubt me? How many other networked document protocols created in the early 90's or before do you use today? I know of a dozen or so -- I only use HTTP/HTML. I think it's because it was the only one that could be written so sloppily that we could publish things *while* we learned.
I am concerned that the growing rigidity of the code will lock out the hobbyists. I believe we are going through a similar transition as early radio, after the hobbyist crystal-set owners stopped broadcasting because they couldn't keep up with the rules they needed to follow. However, without those rules much of the radio culture would not have formed.
It is vital, IMO, to have advanced, capable standards existing side-by-side with easy, flexible, and immediately useful means for each individual to grow into them.
I think the W3C needs to produce more flavors of XHTML than just the single specification... I'm thinking more along the lines of:
"XHTML 2.0 - Simple" "XHTML 2.0 - Contracted Tags + Attributes" "XHTML 2.0 - Complete"
Where the "Simple" edition is a vastly simplified version where there's less emphasis on content/presentation separation, such as greater support for attribute styles and perhaps a <LayoutTable> element? Where each <LayoutCell> has a "Context Order" informing screen-readers in what order to read the content?
A simple, advanced DTD that is not XML-rigid would be very good. I'm not sure tables are needed; our newbie coders think in tables because that's what they know. Tomorrow's newbies will think differently.
What is needed is specifically a DTD that merges presentation, content, and behavior, without burdening user-agents that are already built for the more strict, rigid, powerful stuff. For example, an easier way to attach inline styles and scripts than our single event handlers and style tags.
<div SBorder="1" sWidth="500" AttachMouse="follow()">
The content of this div is 500px wide and follows the mouse.
It is not xml-compliant, but its attributes clearly map
to specific CSS standards, with certain, common assumptions.
</DIV>...or some such. Something that allows the newbies to see one small bit of code do something specific. From here they can graduate to removing styles to classes, behaviors to scripts, and so forth. It is this merged ability that makes beginning print layout hobbyists opt for embedded graphics, styles, and macros in a Word document over the professional layout designer using the separated Quark method. It is worth maintaining, and should be deliberately designed to foster self-propelled education in the proper methods.
I was also thinking of bandwidth conservation, especilly with the mobile device market, and thought up a variant of XHTML where only the essential elements are included, and represented using the minimum of letters, ditto for their attributes
Don't worry about tag space. Tags compress *very* well with http compression, to the point where your code may not save any space.
Note my use of my proposed "universal closing tag" '</>'
Then the bad habit this induces would be to start throwing unneeded extra universal-closers everywhere you can think of. Ick.
Just out of curiosity... how do I get things like these formalised into an RFC Document and sent to the W3C for review?
I'd start here: http://www.w3.org/Mail/
--
Ben Curtis : webwright
bivia : a personal web studio
http://www.bivia.com
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