HTML 5 Differences from HTML 4

**Stevie D** · Apr 16, 2009 05:04

Originally Posted by C. Ankerstjerne

I see that the HTML 5 draft still has a series of extremely critical errors:

Numbers must use a decimal point, ignoring the use of the decimal comma. Since most countries use the decimal comma, it is not possible to write documents in most languages using HTML 5.
Dates must tentatively follow the ISO 8601-format, which does not allow for dates prior to year 1 or after year 9999 without prior agreement between the parties reading the document. Therefore, it is impossible to write documents about Julius Cesar, Moses or dinosaurs using HTML 5, unless the articles are accessed through a form requiring such agreement. Forthermore, the HTML 5 representation of ISO 8601 is broken, as the hyphens in ISO 8601-compliant dates must be non-breaking.
It is still not possible to transscribe certain physical documents in HTML 5, as tt, strike, u and other such elements with presentational-semantic meaning are removed. It was possible to use these elements with HTML 4.01 Transitional (as they were only deprecated) or HTML 3.2, but as of HTML 5, these elements are dropped.

1 and 2 - the formats for numbers, dates and times relate to anywhere that the number/date/time is coded into the HTML - nothing about the content. If I wanted to refer to today's date in an attribute, it would have to be 2009-04-16, but if I was referring to it in the text I could equally call it 16/4/2009, Thursday 16 April 2009, or even 5707th September 1993 if I wanted to.

3 - There are still semantic elements that appear in teletype, struck through and underlined. If those are appropriate to use, use them. If not, you will have to use CSS to get the presentation that you desire - and that is perfectly correct and appropriate. Depending on what the reason for the decoration is, you may just need to apply a class="underline" to the text, or you may want to mark it as <strong> and then define strong {text-decoration: underline; font-weight:normal;} in the CSS if that is more appropriate to the original intention.

HTML as a language is not defined to allow you to precisely replicate a particularly typed page. HTML+CSS work as a pair to give detailed typographical control over a page, or other formats such as Postscript and PDF are available if that is inappropriate or inadequate. What next, you want to use the <center> element because it is essential to faithfully reproducing the document that a section of content is centred?

**articlemaster** · Apr 16, 2009 05:10

the difference between HTML 4 and HTML 5 will be understand from the following example hope it will help.
Example of HTML 4

<html> <head>
<title>Hobo Web LTD Scotland</title>
</head>
<body>
<div id="page">
<div id="header">
<h1><a href="/blog/">Hobo Web</a></h1>
</div>
<div id="container">
<div id="center" class="column">
<div class="post" id="post-102">
<h2><a href="/test-page/">
Test Page 1</a></h2> <div class="entry">
<p>Article Text here</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="post" id="post-101">
<h2><a href="/test2/">
Test 2</a></h2>
<div class="entry">
<p>Article 2 Text here</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="navigation">
<div class="alignleft">
<a href="/blog/page/2/">« Previous Entries</a>
</div>
<div class="alignright"></div>
</div>
</div>
<div id="right" class="column">
<ul id="sidebar">
<li><h2>Hobo Stuff</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="/blog/comment-policy/">Comment Policy</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/todo-list/">Todo List</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><h2>Archives</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href='/blog/2008/04/'>April 2008</a></li>
<li><a href='/blog/2008/03/'>March 2008</a></li>
<li><a href='/blog/2008/02/'>February 2008</a></li>
<li><a href='/blog/2008/01/'>January 2008</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div id="footer"><p>Copyright 2008 Hobo Web LTD</p>
</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Example of HTML 5

<html> <head>
<title>Hobo Web LTD Scotland</title>
</head>
<body>
<header>
<h1><a href="http://blog/">Hobo Web</a></h1>
</header>
<section>
<article>
<h2><a href="/test-page/">
Test Page 1</a></h2> <p>Article Text here</p>
</article>
<article>
<h2><a href="/test2/">
Test 2</a></h2>
<p>Article Text 2 here</p>
</article>
<nav>
<a href="/blog/page/2/">« Previous Entries</a>
</nav>
</section>
<nav>
<ul>
<li><h2>Hobo Stuff</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href="/blog/comment-policy/">Comment Policy</a></li>
<li><a href="/blog/todo-list/">Todo List</a></li>
</ul></li>
<li><h2>Archives</h2>
<ul>
<li><a href='/blog/2008/04/'>April 2008</a></li>
<li><a href='/blog/2008/03/'>March 2008</a></li>
<li><a href='/blog/2008/02/'>February 2008</a></li>
<li><a href='/blog/2008/01/'>January 2008</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</nav>
<footer>
<p>Copyright 2008 Hobo Web LTD</p>
</footer>
</body>
</html>

**glenngould** · Apr 16, 2009 05:28

Originally Posted by Stevie D

...or other formats such as Postscript and PDF are available if that is inappropriate or inadequate. What next, you want to use the <center> element because it is essential to faithfully reproducing the document that a section of content is centred?

I agree with this. Think what other elements we would need to markup 'concrete poetry' like Apollinaire’s Calligrammes

**C. Ankerstjerne** · Apr 16, 2009 06:05

1 and 2 - the formats for numbers, dates and times relate to anywhere that the number/date/time is coded into the HTML - nothing about the content. If I wanted to refer to today's date in an attribute, it would have to be 2009-04-16

And if I want to refer to the year when Cesar was, it's impossible. And if I want to refer to a decimal number in most non-English languages, it would be impossible too.

3 - There are still semantic elements that appear in teletype, struck through and underlined. If those are appropriate to use, use them.

I can't. They don't exist at all in HTML 5, and in HTML 4.01 they're deprecated.

**cooper.semantics** · Apr 16, 2009 06:10

Originally Posted by Florent V.

In French, this is the definition of a "sigle", not an "acronyme".

In French, "radar" is an "acronyme" because it can be read as a word. But other combinations of initial letters or parts of a series of words, when they cannot be read as a word, are just "abréviation".

HTML, for instance, is an "abréviation". It's not a "sigle", because the T is not an initial letter (hyperText). It's not an "acronyme", because HTML cannot be read as a word (you have to pronounce the letters individually).

HTML - is an "abréviation".
CSS - is a "sigle" (subset of an "abréviation")
OTAN (French for NATO) - is a "sigle acronymique", that is a "sigle" that is also an "acronyme", and of course both "sigle" and "acronyme" are subsets of "abréviation"
BOHICA - not sure what it stands for, but such a form would be an "acronyme" or a "sigle acronymique", and of course that's an "abréviation".

Common pattern here? "Abréviation".

Of course other languages have different concepts altogether.

I see where your going with this

Well if that is the case then I suppose just using the abbr is a good solution.

**cooper.semantics** · Apr 16, 2009 06:49

For those unfamiliar with html5:
http://www.brucelawson.co.uk/tests/html5-elements.html
http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/
http://www.quackit.com/html_5/tags/h...attributes.cfm
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-html5/
http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/FAQ#What_is_HTML_5.3F
http://simon.html5.org/html5-elements
http://forabeautifulweb.com/demo/2008/11/15/index.html
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/previewofhtml5
http://jontangerine.com/log/2008/03/...ic-class-names

**zcorpan** · Apr 16, 2009 08:23

Originally Posted by Florent V.

Well, no need to rename ABBR to SH. A broad definition of "abbreviation" already covers language discrepancies. So the WG's decision is sensible. Actually it has been in the air for years before HTML5 was even started, i can remember Laurent Denis (French HTML-CSS and accessibility expert) predicting this move in 2005.

FWIW, HTML5 work started in late 2003.
http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps...html#history-0

**mikothang** · Apr 16, 2009 08:29

thanks for all the links, I didn't realize how early html5 began

**cooper.semantics** · Apr 16, 2009 08:34

@zcorpan

Is this the Latest spec?
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html

**zcorpan** · Apr 16, 2009 08:56

Originally Posted by cooper.semantics

@zcorpan

Is this the Latest spec?
http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html

Yes, it reflects the latest checkin. The WHATWG copy of the spec sometimes reflects a snapshot of the editor's working copy, as it happens to do today (W3C version is dated 8 April and WHATWG 10 April -- the datagrid section is currently being edited and is thus different in the WHATWG copy until the next checkin).

You can track spec changes with
http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker
or
http://twitter.com/WHATWG

**vanishdesign** · Apr 16, 2009 09:09

Originally Posted by cooper.semantics

Acronym - A word formed from the initial letters of a name, such as WAC for Women's Army Corps, or by combining initial letters or parts of a series of words, such as radar for radio detecting and ranging.

So for example:
HTML - Abbr
CSS - Abbr
NATO - Acronym
BOHICA - Acronym

Technically HTML is an initialism but that word almost never comes up in English usage. Even the joke TLA (three letter acronym) is not technically an acronym.

**AlexDawson** · Apr 16, 2009 09:57

Initialism's aren't that uncommon, especially in our industry.

**Kevinul** · Apr 16, 2009 15:37

Originally Posted by AlexDawson

Initialism's aren't that uncommon, especially in our industry.

Yes, that is certainly true.

This whole thread is quite interesting and quite active as there is a lot of "Today" posts with about a page and a half long. The discussion on HTML5 & XHTML 2 was of my main interests and how a few people disliked how HTML is going with good supported arguments.

**Stevie D** · Apr 16, 2009 15:51

Originally Posted by C. Ankerstjerne

And if I want to refer to the year when Cesar was, it's impossible. And if I want to refer to a decimal number in most non-English languages, it would be impossible too.

If you are referring to a date over two-thousand ago, you will simply have to forgo the coded bit of it. That is no great loss, we've managed without programatically specified dates in HTMLs 1, 2, 3 and 4 without the world falling apart, and we've still been able to write about dates in the dim and distant past, or the far off future.

To quote from: http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overvie...e-time-element:

This element is intended as a way to encode modern dates and times in a machine-readable way so that user agents can offer to add them to the user's calendar. For example, adding birthday reminders or scheduling events.

The time element is not intended for encoding times for which a precise date or time cannot be established. For example, it would be inappropriate for encoding times like "one millisecond after the big bang", "the early part of the Jurassic period", or "a winter around 250 BCE".

For dates before the introduction of the Gregorian calendar, authors are encouraged to not use the time element, or else to be very careful about converting dates and times from the period to the Gregorian calendar. This is complicated by the way the Gregorian calendar was phased in at different times in different countries, ranging from part way through the 16th century all the way to early in the 20th.

That doesn't mean that any date or time you refer to in the text of your document has to be described in ISO format - if you want to write about something in 250BCE, or if you want to use the Muslim calendar, or the Eternal September, that's fine. You just can't encode it in the way that you can dates in the Gregorian calendar.

Numbers - again, you're confusing code with content.

It is perfectly acceptable to have, for example, <meter value="0.8">0,8</meter>, where the value attribute uses the decimal point (0.8) and the displayed content uses whatever representation is most appropriate to your audience, which in some cases may be a decimal comma (0,8).

I can't. They don't exist at all in HTML 5, and in HTML 4.01 they're deprecated.

You're not reading properly what I and everyone else are writing.

There is an element that underlines text - the ins element. If the underlined text isn't "inserted", you will have to define a class or redefine the presentation of another more appropriate element with CSS.

Likewise the use of del strikes out text, and the use of pre displays the text in a fixed width font (pre-formatted). If those are not semantically appropriate, then your wish to have the text rendered in strikethrough, underlined or as teletype is presentational only, and should be defined in CSS.

The reason that u, strike and tt were deprecated in HTML4 and absent from HTML5 is because they are purely presentational elements carrying no structural or semantic meaning, and are therefore inappropriate in a document markup language where stylesheets are intended to do that job.

If that still doesn't help you to understand the answer, how about posting an example of the text that you say cannot be written in HTML5, and then we can explain to you how it can and should be written, and why.

**Stormrider** · Apr 16, 2009 16:35

Originally Posted by Stevie D

There is an element that underlines text - the ins element.

ins isn't an element that underlines text, it is an element that marks up inserted text, and happens to be styled with an underline in the majority of modern browsers. There is a difference.

**cooper.semantics** · Apr 16, 2009 16:59

http://htmldog.com/reference/htmltags/ins/
http://htmldog.com/reference/htmltags/del/

It seems a lot of people abuse markup for its presentational value modern browsers share.

strong, em, ins, del ...

**Stormrider** · Apr 16, 2009 23:09

What annoys me is when people wholesale replace b and i with strong and em, thinking this is more 'semantic', when it could in fact be the opposite. EG - A CMS / WYSIWYG editor, where I think it would be more appropriate to use b to mark up bold text, rather than strong.

**Stomme poes** · Apr 17, 2009 00:50

The reason that u, strike and tt were deprecated in HTML4 and absent from HTML5 is because they are purely presentational elements carrying no structural or semantic meaning, and are therefore inappropriate in a document markup language where stylesheets are intended to do that job.

tt is deprecated? I was pretty sure it wasn't. It has meaning, not presentation: it means "text typed in" (perfect for instructions and tutorials, and could easily be styled to look like the bold monospace of an ORLY book).
I'm sure ins could do that job a lot of the time, but I consider ins for text inserted "after the fact" such as additions and changes in a legal document, not an instruction for the student to "type this in".

I wonder if u wasn't deprecated because it was unsemantic (if you were taught in bibliography to underline titles of publications it certainly has a meaning, "this is a title of a publication I'm referencing") but more because it clashed with the newer meaning of underlined text: anchors. When I run across underlined text in older websites I often find myself trying to click them : )

Strike made sense, because it means "deleted text" and we have del.

There are still semantic elements that appear in teletype, struck through and underlined.

Those are default styles of a user agent, and not even every user agent follows them, so relying on a tag that just so happens to popularly be underlined (say, and anchor) in order to show something following typographic convention (the underlining of publication titles in a bibliography) is still a no-no.
I understand that typography can look like presentation, and certainly has a different relation to semantics, and I can also understand that if there's a tag with specific meaning that can replace, for instance, something for ship names or bibliography listings, then of course we could use them instead of something like <u>.
And on 99% of web sites, if someone wants something underlined, it's presentation, and CSS should of course be used.

**zcorpan** · Apr 17, 2009 01:46

Originally Posted by Stomme poes

tt is deprecated? I was pretty sure it wasn't. It has meaning, not presentation: it means "text typed in" (perfect for instructions and tutorials, and could easily be styled to look like the bold monospace of an ORLY book).

Are you thinking about <kbd>? <tt> in HTML4 is defined as

Renders as teletype or monospaced text.

-- http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/present...s.html#edef-TT

<kbd>:

Indicates text to be entered by the user.

-- http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/text.html#edef-KBD

The kbd element represents user input (typically keyboard input, although it may also be used to represent other input, such as voice commands).

-- http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps...he-kbd-element

**Stormrider** · Apr 17, 2009 01:55

Originally Posted by Stomme poes

I wonder if u wasn't deprecated because it was unsemantic (if you were taught in bibliography to underline titles of publications it certainly has a meaning, "this is a title of a publication I'm referencing") but more because it clashed with the newer meaning of underlined text: anchors. When I run across underlined text in older websites I often find myself trying to click them : )

Yeh, everywhere I've seen it mentioned says something about underline having a special meaning on the web, rather than because it was unsemantic - hence why b and i are not deprecated as well.

**Amenthes** · Apr 17, 2009 02:09

There's a thing I don't get in this whole thread. Why mentioning XHTML 2? I haven't heard
news about it in ages and the last working draft is dated July 2006. Is there something that
I miss? HTML 5 is alive, whereas XHTML 2 is dead. And by the way, one can use XHTML 5 if
there's such a need for custom elements.

**AlexDawson** · Apr 17, 2009 02:31

What makes you think XHTML2 is dead? it is going to be a LONG time before we can use HTML5 because we need older browsers to die off before we can truely support it without issue. And seeing how IE6 which is 8 years old is still lingering around, i would not hold your breath on HTML5 adoption anytime soon.

**Amenthes** · Apr 17, 2009 02:47

Originally Posted by AlexDawson

What makes you think XHTML2 is dead? it is going to be a LONG time before we can use HTML5 because we need older browsers to die off before we can truely support it without issue. And seeing how IE6 which is 8 years old is still lingering around, i would not hold your breath on HTML5 adoption anytime soon.

Is there any active mailing list discussing XHTML 2? Or any browser vendor
trying to implement features from XHTML 2? As far as I know there aren't.
Saying that is hard to adopt HTML 5 because of IE 6 doesn't make XHTML 2
alive.

It's kind of freaky for me to find out there are people that still believe in XHTML 2.
It's like I'm in 2005.

On the other hand, I like how major browser vendors are actively participating
in discussions regarding the new HTML 5 standard. They develop early implementations
of the proposed features and give feedback. Things are going much better this way as
far as I can tell. It's pretty agile.

**zcorpan** · Apr 17, 2009 03:59

Originally Posted by Amenthes

Is there any active mailing list discussing XHTML 2?

Yes: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xhtml2/

(At least, the mailing list is intended for discussing XHTML 2. Bonus points for the one who finds technical discussion regarding XHTML 2 in there during the past few months.)

Originally Posted by Amenthes

Or any browser vendor
trying to implement features from XHTML 2?

Not as far as I know.

**AutisticCuckoo** · Apr 17, 2009 04:49

Originally Posted by Stomme poes

tt is deprecated? I was pretty sure it wasn't. It has meaning, not presentation: it means "text typed in" (perfect for instructions and tutorials, and could easily be styled to look like the bold monospace of an ORLY book).

No, it's not deprecated. And no, it doesn't mean 'text typed in'.

TT stands for 'teletype', i.e., text that looks similar to what you'd see on a text or hardcopy terminal. (I guess many here are too young to know what that is, but nevermind.)

It's mainly presentational, just like B and I. But also like B and I, there are times you'd want to use it rather than a SPAN with a class for presentation. Mainly to adhere to long-standing typographic convention.

One example is if you're referring to files or directories, e.g., in a user's manual or a tutorial.

Code HTML4Strict:

<ol>
  <li>Open <tt>index.html</tt> in your text editor.</li>
  ...
</ol>

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