ArtLung Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)

I love HTML

I have been hand-writing HTML for a long time! I'm fascinated by markup. I love the history of it.

It might be the most ubiquitous digital format on the planet.

I love to view source.

Next up I'll be doing a site in XHTML Mobile Profile

DTD Hacking?

Before HTML5 was codified as a living standard getting pages to behave well with different browsers was hard.

We often used HTML validation as a tool to check for basic errors in syntax. HTML validation obliged some of us to learn about SGML and DTDs. Think of validation as akin to "linting" in programming--akin to a grammar checker for code.

In 1999, I was writing to make things work properly in both Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Both had different conventions to make things look right, many of which were non-standard. But I still wanted to validate my pages against some standard, so I wrote my own.

Writing invalid code customized on a per-browser basis will always be an exception, and decades later it is much easier to avoid doint this. That's partly because of The Web Standards Project. I am proud of my involvement with the Web Standards Project.

HTML as Historical Re-enactment

The web is better now that browsers treat code more uniformly. The "hacks" are less necessary.

"Historic" HTML fascinates me. What changed in each iteration? What tags were added? What attributes removed? I enjoy the opportunity to write validating HTML to schemas (DTDs) other than HTML5. I like to think of this as a kind of historical re-enactment. Perhaps a bit like when you see a quilter or blacksmith actively working in a museum.

HTML is meant to be both backward- and forward-compatible. My experiments with old HTML document types load in any browser past or present.

The Web Is Better

Now go make a web page!

Joe Crawford made this. He lives in San Diego. Go make a web page! Subscribe to his Newsletter, send a webmention or Say hi!