j9t’s avatarj9t’s Twitter Archive—№ 1,402

  1. For a frontend developer to read the #HTML 3.2 specification (1997):
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    1. …in reply to @j9t
      I did re-read the #HTML 3.2 spec. Thread. First, I believe this spec IS a start if you want to learn HTML. I also believe that compared to the size of the Living HTML standard (769 pages per print preview), this one is really grateful (42 pages).
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      1. …in reply to @j9t
        What immediately stands out is that compared to contemporary specifications, the HTML 3.2 spec is quite imprecise. It also contains a good number of typos and formatting issues. There don’t seem to be errata for HTML 3.2, which seems surprising. (For other W3C specs there are.)
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        1. …in reply to @j9t
          Did I learn something? Little. Five fun facts. “[XMP, LISTING and PLAINTEXT] are obsolete tags for preformatted text that predate the introduction of PRE.” (Remember, the spec was largely written in 1996.)
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          1. …in reply to @j9t
            “CENTER was introduced by Netscape before they added support for the HTML 3.0 DIV element. It is retained in HTML 3.2 on account of its widespread deployment.” And as we noted in @HTTPArchive’s Web Almanac, @Google has been using center for 22 years: almanac.httparchive.org/en/2020/markup
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            1. …in reply to @j9t
              “[action on form] specifies a URL which is either used to post forms via email, e.g. action="mailto:foo@bar.com", or used to invoke a server-side forms handler via HTTP […].” I didn’t know about “mailto:”—yet it doesn’t seem to work (anymore): hell.meiert.org/core/html/form-mailto.html
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              1. …in reply to @j9t
                The HTML 3.2 spec DID bring up the option to use tables for layout: “[Tables] can be used to markup tabular material or for layout purposes.” It cautions about problems “when rending to speech or to text only user agents”—but “can be used for layout purposes” is still there.
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                1. …in reply to @j9t
                  When you think of font elements, you may remember the face attribute. Now, that, too, is an old attribute; but: “FACE is not part of HTML 3.2.” Yet to find out about the history of face, we would need to see Sauron 🤷‍♂️
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