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Blogs » Archive for May 10th, 2007
Six Months Later: The New HTML Working Group
The following is republished from the Tech Times #164.
Because I just wasn’t getting enough email (ha!), I joined the W3C’s new HTML Working Group last month.
Nearly six months ago, now, Tim Berners-Lee announced that the W3C would form a new working group to develop the next version of the HTML specification, alongside renewed efforts towards finalizing XHTML 2.0.
With the new working group now well underway, this blog post will look at what progress has been made, what issues have arisen, and just what we should expect from the next version of HTML.
The New Working Group
Unlike most W3C working groups, the new HTML working group’s charter welcomes the scrutiny and participation of the general public. Anyone can join the working group, post to the mailing list, chime in on teleconferences, and vote on what goes into the final spec.
Better yet, there is no minimum level of participation, so if all you have time to do is monitor the mailing list and vote on issues of interest to you, that’s fine too.
The working group is currently led with good humor by its co-chairs, Chris Wilson (Microsoft/Internet Explorer) and the Dan Connolly (W3C), who do their …
Markup Musings #1: How should you mark up dialog?
Semantic markup. Almost every developer who understands the concept, agrees with it, so why are so many people (myself included) often having trouble applying the principles?
While no doubt sometimes it’s garden-variety laziness, I know that personally there have been times that I’ve wanted to make the right decision but ended up scratching my head. While the HTML standards have done a fairly decent job of mimicking the basic forms and structures we all understand from traditional books (i.e. pages, paragraphs, headings, tables and lists), more and more often I’m finding myself faced with marking up a document that doesn’t fit so neatly into those structures — for instance restaurant menus, screenplays and comic strips. Each has a well-established format that doesn’t necessarily transfer seamlessly to the web.
While I can’t say I have the definitive answers to all these questions, I think it’s useful to at least throw the question out there and get a few alternative views — myself included.
Marking up dialog is the first conundrum we’ll look at.
Let’s start with a piece from a classic — what is the most sensible way to go about marking up the …
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