Is HTML 5 Apathetic Your Cup of Tea?
Way back in September I wrote an article titled The Solution is a HTML 5 Apathetic Doctype in response to the ongoing conversation in the HTML 5 arena around the proposed changes to the alt attribute so the case study of Flickr could be satisfied. Its about lowering the bar for the lowest common denominator. Since then the article has found its way to become a reference on a W3.org wiki page titled Omitting alt Attribute for Critical Content and made it onto the University of Minnesota Duluth page for Standards, Guidelines and Patterns under Related Standards Info. Its also popped up on several related mailing lists. The rest of this post is a republishing of The Solution is a HTML 5 Apathetic Doctype.
The discussion has been going on for a while and for the uninitiated I’d suggest you read Roger Johansson’s lates post – Can the alt attribute be omitted without hurting accessibility? Or Molly Holzschlag’s post – Web standards situation solutions. While a lot of the HTML 5 conversation goes over my head (I’m not in the time position to follow the development of a specification too closely) there are some parts which I strongly feel need attention.
For one, it seems slightly out of focus to be making alt attributes on images optional on the case study that Flickr can’t possibly provide that – hey let’s just dumb it down to the lowest common denominator! Then I started thinking – hey why not just dumb it down a few notches more because most pages out there are invalid crap anyway we can just let anything by. How? Well I am suggesting the HTML 5 Apathetic Doctype which particularly aims to give the tick of approval to anyone who cares enough to have a meeting to object to having to care about web standards. Yes its a free pass.
With the HTML 5 Apathetic Docytype working for your organisation you can avoid having to bother to close elements – you started an unordered list and the browser should be smart enough to figure out you just finished your list items! You might want to throw in some elements of your own like the bullshit tag for when you’re quoting someone but want to add the semantic meaning that what they were saying is crap. That’s a good one – it may work its way into the specification yet.
Further, with the HTML 5 Apathetic Doctype it will mean the case study of Flickr is satisfied – they will always be valid. The tick of approval. On the up side we can claim like religions do that whole countries are Christian / standardistas (interchangeable). God is on our side here right? Web standards high quality valid code will be 100 times more common on websites within a year. It could – but this is a reach – be put at the top of a Microsoft Frontpage document (or even a Word document) and instantly make it the valid gem it deserves to be.
Now this post may sound a bit mean and it could come across as slightly thicker than a tongue in cheek commentary of where we are with the suggested demobbing of alternate text (not at all useful in many people’s eyes).
HTML 5 Apathetic t-shirts will be available at the door on your way out and we give free validation for first time DOCTYPE users. Thankyou for coming.
ps. I should clarify that you wouldn’t be able to omit the Apathetic Doctype – unfortunately it would actually be needed to validate the page. There is a workaround though. If nobody in an organisation can figure out how to put a Doctype on the page then we just make user agents treat all pages which use the bullshit tag (or a noalt which only exists in this specification) as Apathetic by default. Does that make sense?
Is there a tail wagging this horse by any chance?
November 14th, 2007 at 12:40 pm
Mate, I read this with a grin on my face…as I get what you mean.
November 14th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
The odd thing is this IS what they’re talking about just without the spin… kind of like XHTML Frameset expanded to include every other bad habit. IMO.
November 14th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
Are the HTML5 WG on the brink of saying ‘we don’t need people to use Web Standards in markup any more?’
November 14th, 2007 at 2:50 pm
One has to wonder Matt. I know their heart is in the right place but death by committee comes to mind with HTML 5. Admittedly I am not an expert on their finer detail but from what I can see looking in there are a lot of converging agendas – some no doubt wanting to push aside the accessiblity aspects like meaningful alt attributes on images
What they have to realise is that its one thing to make a standard and another to get people to use it – they need to be marketing the spec to us as developers. I think they’re failing at that.
And one has to wonder if an improved HTML 5 released by a core inner circle both fast and with a few imperfections might have been an improvement. I can’t see a concensus on HTML 5 possible if its a committee driven thing. Hell none of us can agree on some pretty ordinary things so why would a whole spec be any different.
I say release HTML 5 in some form with said ‘improvements’ and see if developers and browsers go for it. Maybe we will or won’t. But if it spends 5 years in committee and gets down to chasing a pedantic perfection HTML was never intended to address then maybe its time to invent a whole NEW technology!
Oh they must hate gnats like me… well us…
all we want is to keep our alt attributes and to tell Flickr to solve its own business case.
November 15th, 2007 at 5:11 am
>>”Oh they must hate gnats like me… well us…”
hehe, true!
>>”….all we want is to keep our alt attributes and to tell Flickr to solve its own business case.”
Yeah, I don’t think that’s too much to ask!
I agree about your logic behind ‘get it out of committee’…and…’not striving for 100% perfection at this point’…I mean: that’s what happened with all the other specs right?!!
Look at HTML 4 for example, released to the masses as a constantly-evolving spec, complete with it’s own shortlist of points to improve on at some moment in time…but at least it still got launched! While HTML 5 – although every one in Web Standards wants to see it made as good as possible – is still stuck in too much indecision and red-tape. It’s delay, over matters that seem to be no-brainers for most of us, has become epic and now, something that is just really very discouraging for anyone who was ever interested in it at all.
Maybe in 2008?…. (Do hear a sigh of doubt?) hehe
Okay, 2009 then??!
November 15th, 2007 at 9:01 am
And until browsers support that HTML 5 spec in enough detail for us to safely use in the wild? Probably 2012 – 2015 wouldn’t be a bad ill-informed guess [anyone can correct me on that one].
Plus we’re going to have to want to use HTML 5 (just like people didn’t adopt XHTML which IMO is better than HTML 4 at face value)… that’s also a sticking point. HTML 4 and XHTML 1, I’m assuming, won’t go unsupported in the new HTML 5 supporting browsers too.
But as long as several perfectionists split hairs and want to spend a year trying to please everyone then we’ll end up with something extremely late and overly compromised. That’s just software engineering on a 2 cent stamp. I know at heart these people are true believers but they have to realise that creating a spec is an ACADEMIC exercise.
Yes I think bang out a reasonably usable spec now and close those doors to the committee misadventure once and for all as a failed experiment. If its got noalt and that gets treated like tripe we can at least deprecate its use in a year (as opposed to bringing it out as a final version HTML 5 and then having these pedantic geeks swear for 10 years its perfect in every way).
Oh I’m such a cynic lol.
November 15th, 2007 at 2:30 pm
>>”Oh I’m such a cynic lol.”
hehe, but justifiably so mate!
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:15 pm
[...] Yet this year has seen this unordered list’s assurances, from almost iconic personalities, that now everyone knows how to use the browser. Not only that but we’ll stop trying to assist some users on the grounds that they should know better or some software company has failed them. That’s just a lot of bollocksy-bollocks-crock! Sorry but if you can justify any of that with a straight face then go ahead because I’m kind of lost on the rationale. Are we saying that AJAX won some kind of DHTML war and now we’re changing the colour of our pieces? Is this like dumbing down an alt attribute so that Flickr can get under the bar for a HTML 5 touchdown? [...]
January 3rd, 2008 at 11:03 am
[...] from my tongue in cheek post The Solution is a HTML 5 Apathetic Doctype which I republished as Is HTML 5 Apathetic your Cup of Tea? in November. In my view HTML 5 isn’t worth talking about and if you’re going to dumb it [...]