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The HTML5 longdesc attribute is finally home again

My HTML5 logo

I found out that the W3C had transitioned the HTML5 attribute @longdesc to Candidate Recommendation (CR) status from a tweet by John Foliot:

Yes, I believe I do owe John a beer. I owe a beer to all of those who fought to ensure @longdesc made it to CR—especially Laura Carlson, who worked so diligently on behalf of this attribute, and other HTML5 accessibility features.

Years ago I was heavily involved in the W3C HTML5 effort, though I was frequently at odds with Ian Hickson, HTML5’s sole editor at the time, and some of the Working Group’s management. Since then, the W3C has transitioned the care and management of HTML back into a group effort, leading to decisions such as giving @longdesc CR status.

I don’t agree with all W3C decisions, but my main concern has always been that the decisions reflect a representation of those who support or depend on the web—not just an elite few. The transition of @longdesc to CR status demonstrates that the HTML5 working process has, indeed, grown up.

Well done.

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Any element can be replaced with something more relevant

I only check into the doings of the HTML WG at the W3C once a week.

Most of my time is spent on my new book, Learning Node. Frankly, Node has been a refreshing change from the smoky labyrinth which is the HTML5 spec process. I’d check in with the Working Group less often, but I still hope to provide at least some moral support for those still slogging away.

You all do realize that the battle over longdesc is still being fought, don’t you? Oh, there’s other new battles, including some interesting ones over a new path object added to the Canvas2D spec (Eh? What?), and encrypted media (very long discussion about this one), but longdesc still remains the perennial favorite.

The issue now is keeping any decision about longdesc separate from decisions being made about ARIA attributes. At least, I think this is the issue. What caught my eye today was something Sam Ruby wrote to the group:

My biggest concern is resolving ISSUE-30. By that I mean done. There may be Formal Objections, but there won’t be new information, so at that point this Working Group is done subject to Director approval.

Put another way, I have zero interest in a provisional decision that
would likely lead to a reopening based on new information. At the
present time, I see two potential candidates for new information. One
is the subject of issue 204. The other would be somebody putting
forward a spec for something akin to an aria-describedAt attribute.

The reason I state that is that at the present time I see wide support
for the idea of obsoleting longdesc once there is a viable and clearly
superior replacement. Note: some may not believe that a viable and
clearly superior replacement is possible. Others may not believe that
such is imminent. But I worded what I said carefully to include such
people’s opinion.

So the task we face is eliminating all alternatives.

I can agree that resolving this issue, completely, should be a goal. However, Sam demands that those who support longdesc provide a surety that there can be no better alternative in the future, and that’s just impossible. There is no surety for any component or element of the HTML5 specification. I have no doubts that, at some future time, better and improved replacements can be found for all HTML5 elements, attributes, and various and assorted sundry APIs.

(Simple elimination comes to mind as a way of improving some of the new additions.)

No other element or attribute in HTML has undergone such rigid opposition and such rigorous support. I would feel better, much better, about HTML5 if any of the new objects, elements, and attributes received even a tenth of the inspection and discussion that has been afforded to lowly, simple little longdesc. Objects, such as Path.

And now, the gauntlet has been tossed: longdesc is our princess in the tower, the W3C the wicked sorceress, and the demand has been made that either a knight in shining armor rescue the poor damsel or she be dragon kibble.

Eliminate all alternatives to longdesc? How many years do we have, Sam?

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This page isn’t valid…and who cares

I covered my recent experiments in using SVG in HTML in SVG in HTML. I linked two different example pages with SVG inline in HTML: one dependent on HTML5 parsing (Firefox nightly), the other using the library, SVGWeb.

There’s another difference between the two examples other than just their implementation. The first example, dependent on a browser parsing the page as HTML5, doesn’t validate. The example using SVGWeb, does. Yet, both pages display correctly, as long as you use an HTML5 enabled browser for the first. The odder thing is, neither page is “invalid”.

The HTML markup is fine for both, as is the SVG used. However, the Validator doesn’t like inline SVG at this time, because, we’re told, no browser implements SVG inline in HTML, yet. The SVGWeb example validates because the SVG is contained in a script block. The validation problems with the first example go beyond embedding the SVG element directly in the web page, though. The example also incorporates a metadata element in the SVG that contains RDF/XML.

Embedding RDF/XML into the metadata element is perfectly valid with SVG, and in fact, quite common when people attach Creative Commons licenses to their work. The HTML5 Validator, though, doesn’t really know what to do with this RDF/XML. Why? Because RDF/XML uses namespaced elements, and namespaced elements are taboo in HTML. Yet, SVG is acceptable in HTML5.

Herein we discover the paradox that is HTML5: XML allowed in HTML, but parsed as HTML; extensible namespaced elements that are valid in SVG/XML, becoming invalid when embedded in the non-extensible environment that is HTML5. HTML5 as XHTML likes namespaces. HTML5 as HTML does not like namespaces. But HTML5, as both XHTML and HTML likes SVG, and SVG likes namespaces.

Pictorially, the logic of this looks about as follows (which would not be valid if inserted into an HTML5 HTML document):

Ouroborous

Oh, what is a web designer/developer to do, who just wants to use a little SVG here and there? Enter, stage left, the HTML5 Doctor.

Recently the HTML5 Doctor was asked about attributes and elements from HTML4 that are now obsolete but conforming (or not) in HTML5. Won’t adding a HTML5 DOCTYPE while still using these elements cause the pages to be invalid?

The Doctor’s answer:

While validation is undoubtedly important for your markup and your CSS, in my opinion it isn’t crucial to a site. Allow me to explain, we recently received a couple of emails pointing out that this site doesn’t validate. While there were some errors that have now been corrected, a primary reason why is the use of ARIA roles in the markup. These attributes currently aren’t allowed in the current specification, however there is work underway to make this happen.

To illustrate this point let’s look at Google, the search giant. If you look at the source on Google’s search pages you’ll see they use the HTML 5 doctype.

<!DOCTYPE html>

However, those pages don’t validate because they use the font and center elements amongst others things that we already know have been removed from the specification. Does this mean that users stop visiting Google? No.

Remember too that the specification is yet to be finalised and may still be changed (thus breaking you’re perfectly valid docments), in partnership with this changes to the specification may not immediately take be implemented in the validators. We also need to bear in mind that HTML 5 takes a “pave the cowpaths” approach to development, meaning that the Hixie, et al will look at what authors already do and improve upon it.

The days of validation being an end all, be all, are effectively over with HTML5. By obsoleting (not deprecating) elements that were perfectly valid in HTML4; by not providing an extensibility path within HTML in HTML5, especially considering that new elements will arise over time—not to mention, the inclusion of perfectly legitimate namespaces elements in SVG— all, combined make “validation” a goal, but not an end when it comes to the web pages of the future. We’re more likely to define a set of supported browsers and user agents and worry more about the pages working with these, then be concerned about whether the pages validate in Validator.nu.

So, my one web page with the inline SVG works with the Firefox nightly, with HTML5 parsing enabled. It isn’t valid…but who cares?

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Microsoft’s proposed namespace distributed extensibility in HTML5

Per Sam Ruby, Microsoft has submitted a proposal for distributed extensibility in HTML5, which features the use of namespaces.

The proposal uses reverse DNS names, but other than those ugly sons-of-bitches, it looks promising. There are some issues, including no support for innerHTML on namespaced elements, because they would end up defined as Element, not HTMLUnknownElement, but I don’t think that’s going to be a real problem in the wild. More importantly, I believe the proposal would handle the problems I noted in my last writing, about the valid use of namespaced elements and attributes in SVG. The issue with namespaced elements in SVG isn’t a made-up problem or one that is unlikely to occur: it is a real problem, it will occur in the future, and it does require real solutions. The problem is not going to go away because Ian Hickson clicks ruby shoes together and murmurs “There’s no such thing as namespaces…there’s no such thing as namespaces…” This absolute refusal to acknowledge something that has existed on the web for a decade is, frankly, unconscionable.

I wish I could say that the happy campers of the HTML WG are willing to at least enter into an open and unbiased discussion on the proposal, but I stopped believing in fairy tales, a long time ago. There is contention on this issue (namespaces for distributed extensibility), as noted in the past, in the current discussion, in the HTML WG bug database, related to the new RDFa-in-HTML proposal. Needless to say, the WhatWG members have responded in their typical, open and mature manner.

But here’s some cold, hard reality for Ian et al: this isn’t a proposal from folks like me, who have little say, and no power. This proposal comes from Microsoft. Microsoft, who still maintains a dominant position when it comes to browser use in the world. The HTML5 editor cannot simply ignore the proposal, pretend he doesn’t understand it, or rubber stamp it WONTFIX. Not this time.

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HTML4 is to markup

In an interview at WebScienceMan titled, XHTML Users: Grow up!, the interviewee, Sitepoint’s Tommy Olsson answers a question as to whether he likes XHTML with, Grow up! 🙂 Seriously, XHTML is long dead, due to a decade of horrible abuse. Not even the bleached bones remain..

Mr. Olsson believes that we should be using HTML 4, strict HTML 4, because HTML5 is still a bit of whimsy, and XHTML is a pile of dead bones. As I wrote in comments, HTML 4 is to markup, like 8-track is to music.