Re: Books - what are the best references for HTML?

[Steve Fouts <stefou -at- ESKIMO -dot- COM>]

Jeanne A. E. DeVoto <jaed -at- BEST -dot- COM> wrote:

>However, the [HTML] 3.2 book will tell you most of what you need; most
additions
>to the [HTML] 4.0 standard were proprietary Netscape/MSIE elements during
the 3.2
>period, and are covered as such in the 3.2 edition of the book.)

This is dangerously untrue. First, many of the proprietary extensions to
HTML were
officially snubbed in HTML 4.0. That is, they are not mentioned at all.
MARQUEE and
BLINK fit this category. Others were officially deprecated (more or less
forcefully
removed from the standard) with Cascading Style Sheets filling all of the
gaps.

It is possible that with the Netscape source code thrown open, that
Netscape 5.0
will have strict and complete HTML 4.0 compliance. If that is true, there
will be
a lot of pressure on Microsoft to also deliver strict and complete
compliance.
That means that HTML authors probably want to start slowly moving all those
FONT
tags out and start replacing them with those portions of the Cascading
Style Sheet
standard as are already supported in the 4 level browsers.

In addition, HTML 4.0 supports more multimedia options, scripting
languages, style
sheets, better printing facilities, and documents that are more accessible
to users
with disabilities.

Saying that the 4.0 standard is just rubber stamping the factionalism
introduced
by Netscape and Microsoft is close to blasphemous, and certainly insults the
hard work put in by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to significantly
improve
HTML.

Find the HTML 4.0 spec at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/


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