HTML 3.2 and Beyond

        Reprinted, with permission, from PENN PRINTOUT (Volume 13:3, October 1996). Judy Smith is the author of the article, which is archived at http://www.upenn.edu/archive/v13/3/html32.html

        The easiest way to learn HTML is by example: Find a page you like, view the source, then adapt the tags for your purposes. It's the way of the Web. And it is a good way to begin. But sooner or later it's going to lead to trouble. Someone is going to flame your illegible "non-standard" pages. That's when you realize that pages that look great on your Web browser don't play well "cross-platform." Time to develop an understanding of HTML standards?

        Pay attention to HTML 3.2 tags (if you want to understand the current set of constraints for cross-platform compatibility. All browsers should be able to handle HTML 3.2 tags, although text-based browsers like lynx still have trouble with table tags - especially when they are used to control page layout rather than to define tabular data structures. You need to understand this standard if you want to know what works where and why - whether you decide to play the standards game or not.

        Yet it's table tags in combination with graphic elements that currently provide the only way to design pages that even approach the look of professional documents. The rigid separation between structure, the realm of HTML, and presentation, the realm of style sheets, never worked because the standards bodies couldn't agree on a style sheet standard that browser vendors could implement and that page designers could use.

        But now, the style sheet specification is fairly well understood, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3.0 uses it, Netscape promised to use it in Navigator 4.0, and site designers have begun to take a long hard look at the promise of style sheets: gaining precise typographical and graphical control over documents without losing cross-platform compatibility, but with the added benefit of improving document download time.

        Although a style sheet war between Microsoft and Netscape seems immanent, if you're interested in future directions of HTML, look at the draft Cougar specification (the successor to HTML 3.2), but pay special attention to Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). And yes, the easiest way to learn style sheets is by example.

        Drinking from the fountain

        While documents describing basic style sheets are beginning to flood the Web, most sites have been awaiting the arrival of Netscape 4.0 before moving aggressively ahead. Here are a few interesting "how-to" documents.

        • Microsoft's A User's Guide to Style Sheets (http://www.microsoft.com/workshop/author/css/css-f.htm).
        • Microsoft's Style Sheets: A Brief Overview for Designers (http://www.microsoft.com/workshop/design/des-gen/ss/css-des-f.htm).
        • Microsoft Explorer's unsupported CSS features (http://www.shadow.net/~braden/nostyle/).
        • Webmonkey's Leading and Margins and Fonts! Oh Boy! (http://www.webmonkey.com/html/96/34/index2a.html).
        • Web Review's Between the Style Sheets (http://webreview.com/96/11/ 08/feature/index.html).

        Note: You'll need Internet Explorer (http://www.microsoft.com) to do anything other than view the source code of the examples. Explorer 3.01 is available for Windows 95 and NT; Explorer 3.01b is available for Macintosh. You might also pick up Miccrosoft's free truetype Web fonts (http://www.microsoft.com/truetype) to view the effects of controlling font faces that are used in several of the examples.

        The standards game

        The standards documents at W3C (http://www.w3.org) can be slow going for the average page designer. If you want a short reference that clearly distinguishes the official tags from extensions, try Kevin Werbach's Bare Bones Guide to HTML (http://werbach.com/barebones/barebone.html).

        • W3C's statement of direction (http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/Activity) provides an overview of previous efforts, current projects, and future directions.
        • HTML 2.0 is the baseline standard (RFC 1866 - ftp://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1866.txt) that all graphical and text-based browsers should support.
        • HTML 3.2 adds support for widely used features such as tables, applets, text flow around images, and superscripts and subscripts. It also includes a few minor changes to HTML 2.0 The W3C's main HTML 3.2 page (http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/Wilbur/features.html) includes links to a summary document and a working draft with all the details (http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-html32). W3C recommended some time ago that all browsers begin implementing these features.
        • Cougar (http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/Cougar/HTML.dtd), the code name for the successor to HTML 3.2, introduces a modular approach to HTML standards development. Check the document type definition (DTD) for Cougar and the series of technical reports including W3C recommendations (indicating that the specification is ready for use), proposed recommendations (indicating that the specification is awaiting formal review), and working drafts (indicating that the specification is subject to frequent updates.
        • The style sheet working draft (http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-css1) contains the detailed specification, HTML3 (http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/TR/WD-style.html) and Style Sheets explains how to use Style Sheets with HTML elements, examples and resources (http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Style/) are also available from W3C.
        • The World Wide Web Journal (http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Journal/), published by O'Reily Associates and the W3C, provides in-depth coverage of technological developments, including page authoring and design.


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