Talk:HTML

Valid and not

See User:Dave McKee#HTML.

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In 2001 I wrote a thesis named "How to cope with incorrect HTML", available at http://elsewhat.com/thesis . It deals with the HTML standard and how a browser can parse valid and invalid HTML. Perhaps the most interesting part of this thesis is a validation effort of 2.5 million HTML pages (XHTML was not considered at the time) taken from http://dmoz.org. It showed that only 0.71% of all HTML pages were valid, and describes in some details the different errors the pages had. You can jump directly this chapter via http://elsewhat.com/thesis/pages/?nr=81 , which shows each page of the thesis as a separate image. Perhaps there should be a minor mention on the amount of valid html and links on how to validate HTML ? -DagfinnParnas

HTML tag (actual), etc.

Should the entries HTML tag (actual) and Block level elements even exist? The former is imprecise, ambiguous and only serves to confuse the usage of the term "tag". The latter uses a title that does not restrict its scope to HTML while not even providing very useful information. It's also not even a complete list.

Restricted HTML?

Some software, including MediaWiki, only allow restricted use of HTML by default. I cannot see any reference to or explanation of this in the article. Brianjd 03:21, 2005 Mar 6 (UTC)

I have added cross site scripting, however this is only relevant to a single element, script. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 06:42, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC) [strike Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 07:09, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)]

Actually, it is relevant to form and possibly other elements, but the name and the fact that both the examples were scripts gave the impression that it was only relevant to scripts. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 07:09, 2005 Mar 20 (UTC)

The only justification I have seen for restricting HTML is cross site scripting (XSS), but restricting HTML is not going to help there because scams can be pulled off with or without XSS, e.g. on Donations for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 13:45, 2005 Mar 28 (UTC)

The biggest reason I see is that wikitext is not HTML; it is a plain text markup that happens to have some things in common with HTML. There are good reasons it's a plain text markup--for one thing, you may want to render it as something other than a web page; for another, people shouldn't have to know HTML (or very much) to maintain it. Demi ^T/_{C 02:08, 2005 Mar 31 (UTC)}

Some HTML can be used for malicious intent. So as a precaution the things we don't need are disallowed. Any particular tag you want to use? Mgm|^(talk) 15:00, Apr 2, 2005 (UTC)

Disabling the "things we don't need" carries a cost, so we would rather have a specific reason for implementing restrictions. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 02:07, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

HTML is restricted to prevent cookie stealing and web bugs which would violate a user's privacy, and to prevent malicious scripts which would be disruptive or make a page hard to revert. My favourite example of the latter is the minimalist JavaScript one liner while(1) alert("Hello"); -- Tim Starling 03:21, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)

"cookie stealing" - keep in mind that any program can read cookies in Internet Explorer in Windows Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 02:06, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

"web bugs" - huh? Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 02:06, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

Having read the article web bug, I am unable to see how web bugs can pose a problem on web pages (they can on e-mail). Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 02:12, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

"malicious scripts" - why not just disable scripts? Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 02:06, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

there are serveral good reasons

• Whitelists are safer than blacklists if the client software adds new features, accepts alternate spellings for existing features etc.
• The html needs to be understood by the wiki engine so it doen't do stupid things in the output html (like putting a paragraph marker between cells in table markup).
• It's easier to make sure the output is well formed html if you control whats acceptable in the input
• It may be desirable to render to something other than html in future.

I think that list covers the main reasons for only allowing html tags that are approved by the mediawiki developers Plugwash 12:51, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Can't we just allow anything that's valid in a particular version of XHTML? This will be a fixed standard, addressing the first 3 points. This will have exactly 1 way of interpreting it, so if we want to render in something other than HTML, we can write software (a bot?) to convert it.
Also, I note that this last point is already a problem, as it becomes a problem as soon as you let any HTML in. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 05:07, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)

No, not really. Wiki markup will render to valid HTML no matter what. But what if someone writes invalid XHTML? Is the software supposed to fix it? I don't really understand why you feel we should mix the two markup languages. What's wrong with wiki markup? If we allow HTML, then that reduces the number of people who can edit an article, since not everyone knows HTML. Personally, if I see unnecessary HTML in an article, I remove it.

Also, have you considered what would happen if Wikipedia allowed the img or embed tags? --Sean κ. ⇔ 05:39, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Response to first paragraph: If someone doesn't know HTML, they can just leave the HTML intact, or experiment with the "preview" button.

Response to second paragraph: It would allow added functionality? Right now we have no way of using Flash, right? Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 06:28, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)

Response to first paragraph: If someone's lack of knowledge about HTML prevents them from editing, I say we are hurting Wikipedia.

Response to second paragraph: Currently, there is no way to embed media outside of Wikipedia into an article. If there was, it would open us up to spamming (people sneaking porn into articles using the img tag, by changing the image it pointed to without changing the source), malware (recently a vulnerability was discovered in JPEG, which is why need to be able to scan images as they are uploaded), or DoS (embedding an exceptionally large media file into an article, effectively making the article unable to load in a browser). That is just a short list of bad things I can come up with in 30 seconds. --Sean κ. ⇔ 17:31, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Further, I don't see why this question needs to be addressed on the HTML page. If you have a concern about the wiki markup, you should take it to meta. I notice that you have started the discussion there.. please keep it there. --Sean κ. ⇔ 17:46, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Allowing flash would open up a huge can of worms. Flash seems to be mainly used to create annoying advertising banners and silly games not things that seem appropriate in an encyclopedia. Also most people are unlikely to have the tools to edit it in any way which goes somewhat against the community editing spirit. Also allowing use of images and media from other servers would break the idea of wikipedia as a largely self contained system (you can for example take the public dumps set them up on a non internet connected server and let people browse wikipedia offline). Plugwash 17:56, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

This discussion doesn't really belong here, but... the whole point of the software is to standardise and makes things easier for editors. Permitting unrestricted HTML goes against both these principles; as far as I know, a future goal is to eliminate the use of HTML altogether. ··gracefool |☺ 13:53, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I recall a bug in Gecko allowing ... I think it was something like to open instances of the default email client forever. ¦ Reisio 01:46, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

HTML in Wikipedia

To add HTML in Wikipedia, do what you would do if you were editing a web page in Notepad. This sentence is bold; if you click "edit" you can see how it was done. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 02:08, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

At whom is this comment aimed? Anyone who has ever editted a web page in Notepad will be well aware how to add it anywhere; HTML is HTML. The people for whom simplified markups such as that used by this wiki were invented are the 90% or more of Internet users who have never looked at the source of a page in their life. If for some reason they do, they see "all these funny pointy brackets" and go "where's all my actual text hiding"; this is also why WYSIWYG editting is so popular. This is exactly why "unrestricted" HTML is not the basic markup for MediaWiki pages; I am strongly of the opinion that MediaWiki does not "restrict HTML", but rather borrows selectively from HTML in defining its own, completely unrelated, syntax. Arguably, even MediaWiki's more advanced syntax can be a little daunting to the unitiated, but at least most of it is designed to be understood by humans, rather than computers.

Personally, I would not be at all sad to see <h1> (etc), <b>, <i> and various other tags removed from the wiki syntax, as it's confusing to have multiple ways to produce the same result, and especially the heading tags have all sorts of weird side-effects.

(on a historical note '' used to produce <em> rather than <i>, but this decision was later reversed from experience of how the markup was actually used) - IMSoP 00:41, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I actually think we should go the other way, wiki markup is a mess where virtually anything could be misinterpreted as markup and where some combinations are probablly rendered impossible by the order the parser does things in. A clean tag based format would be much easier to extend without breaking anything. Plugwash 18:24, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Unrelated to above discussion--I've been using HTML2Wiki for a lot of stuff I'm doing, and it works great. Although I have had few problems learning wiki formatting syntax, I can't expect all of my contributors to learn it, which puts a sersious kibosh on them wanting to contribute. I've tried using the wysiwyg plugins (FCK and TinyMCE) but have had limited success. It is a tough call. The great thing would be a utility to go the other way--i.e. Wiki2HTML--so that pulling content out and reusing in other media would be easier. Or straight XML, which seems to be the way things are going. Justinlaine

See meta:Alternative parsers (including a Wiki2XML which may yet become the standard parser), and please stop using this page for discussion not related to Wikipedia's article on HTML. [I'm going to resist getting drawn back in, on principle; fascinating though it is, it belongs elsewhere. - IMSoP 16:30, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

removal of security section (reverted by me)

yes some of the secuirty issues are ie specific but others (especially involving scripting) are pretty much by design of the scripting systems used in html. Furthermore even IE specific issues ARE of concern to anyone involved with putting user supplied content into html pages. Plugwash 12:36, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Programming languages

Does anyone know why HTML is not included in the template that lists major programing languages?...

Since it's the language that the Web was originally built with it seems as major as most the others on that list. PHP is included on that list, but it probably would never have existed were it not for HTML.

--Blackcats 03:45, 4 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It is not included, because HTML is a markup language and not a programming language.

--Andreas 26 Mar 2005

From Programming language:

A programming language or computer language is a standardized communication technique for expressing instructions to a computer.

It looks to me like all markup languages are also programming languages. Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 06:37, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)

No. The markup <em>Important point</em> means "Emphasis on Important point". How the computer interprets this is dependent on the programming. The word "instructions" in the line you cited has a very specific meaning, not the one you are thinking of. The phrases "My document has font size 12pt" and "Make sure to underline links" do not suggest the direct action a computer will take, even though one could think of them as "instructions". If you read the entire article at Programming language, you will see how they differ from Markup languages.--Sean κ. ⇔ 18:56, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

HTML doesn't have any loops, conditionals, functions, etc. that are parts of programming languages: in particular, it has no decision mechanisms. It's not Turing-complete: a program in any of the languages you list above can (with effort) be rewritten into any other language, but not into HTML. (Perhaps the output can become HTML, but the code itself is not.) It's kinda like how people say that music is a language, but they wouldn't try to write a five-paragraph essay in music. HTML is a computer language but not a programming language. --Geoffrey 23:44, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

History of HTML (including SGML origins)

What does not work? While editing the Dutch page about HTML, I discovered the hard way that you should put code examples between PRE (multi-line) or CODE tags.

Also, are you sure HTML started out as an SGML application? IIRC, HTML 1.x was an SGML-like application, with version 2.0 being the first real SGML app.

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Berners-Lee conceptually based HTML on SGML. The first versions were not conforming implementations of SGML--for good reasons. Specifically, conformance required far more resources than was necessary to get the functionality he needed, so he simplified the syntax considerably. --LDC

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Could someone please add some historical info on HTML before September of 1995? -- Infrogmation (who remembers when the leading web browsers were Mosaic and Lynx)

External links

HTML tutorial/Design information

Does anyone else think that the following links in the page are rather poor?

• html-collection.com page with hints for html beginners.
• 10 Layout Rules.com Informations of starting webdesign.

I vote vor deletion of this links, but am not entirely sure because they have survived quite a few edits. -- Patrice Neff 06:18, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Vote for. I would only link a tutorial for valid HTML here, not tag soup. Jor 14:23, 11 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Another vote for deletion, w3schools link is much better -Ayman

Vote for deletion. I agree that w3schools is better. These are good sites, though. On what basis do you make such vague criticisms? Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 08:14, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)

NetDoc

I vote to put this link on: http://www.visiomode.com/docs/ Those CHMs are absolutely handy when there's a need to check something quickly from the spec. -Ilkka ... Comments on this?

How is this relevant? Brianjd | Why restrict HTML? | 08:14, 2005 Apr 17 (UTC)

Tutorials

I wanted to submit a tutorial that does a very thorough job at explaining html to someone who hasn't even looked at a programming language before SiteSyntax.com HTML/XHTML Tutorial -72.141.0.76 01:33, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

It's not so good. :/ ¦ Reisio 01:43, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

How is it not good? Its thorough, to the point, not cluttered with useless ads or unneccessary pictures, and its far better than the htmldog one. What about the whole forums http://www.sitesyntax.com/vb as a resource? An interactive forum dedicated to website design is far more useful to someone than a list of tags that leaves them to fiure out what they are about. --72.141.0.76 05:53, February 4 2006 (UTC)

The very first thing I saw was wrong. Tags and elements are fundamentally different things. Tags are syntax, elements are structure. So it gets basic terminology wrong. Then I read further, and it starts inventing its own terminology. There's no such thing as "main elements". I read further, it claims that "XML is more accepted [than HTML]", which is untrue. I read further, and the very first example is invalid. And the second. I read further, and it implies that an unquoted href attribute with a slash in it is acceptable for HTML but unacceptable for XHTML - this is wrong too, it's unacceptable for both. I read further, and find that it's referring to the doctype as a "tag" - it isn't. That's just the first section. I see nothing of value here, but lots of mistakes. --Bogtha 13:39, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

While I'm sure some of the things you mentioned there are true, I know that XHTML is more accepted now than HTML, simply because of the neater, stricter coding it enforces making it incredibly useful in corporate website development. You are claiming by what you have written to knw a good deal about html, so you should know that it is practically obsolete now and that practically everyone that knows about xhtml is using it.

Sorry, but that's simply not the case. Even the people who know about XHTML invariably write buggy XHTML-interpreted-as-HTML that wouldn't work if a browser interpreted it as XHTML. Start informing yourself by reading Evan Goer's article and all the articles it links to, or I'm sure there are a few choice articles on Anne van Kesteren's weblog that will educate you. While I disagree with Ian Hickson on his general stance towards XHTML, his 'considered harmful' article will contain a few references for you as well. Stating that HTML is obsolete and XHTML is being used by everybody 'in the know' is ignorant. --Bogtha 17:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Along the same lines, I inserted both those html codes from the first and second example into a webpage: http://xen.250free.com/test1.html http://xen.250free.com/test2.html

But I guess that there is a shining example of how much it doesn't work

I said that it was invalid, not that you couldn't get a particular effect in an average browser. Try running it through a validator or using an aural user-agent. The alt attribute is required in every version of HTML published from 1997 onwards. It's also mandatory if you want to write accessible documents, which is a legal requirement for many people. --Bogtha 17:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

(It also goes to show that if you can't tell that the most basic of codes does work, then you know crap all about html). If you're referring to the abscence of the doctype (Which whether or not its a tag makes absolutely no difference to the coding itself, it just makes it easier to reference to newbies).

Actually, a missing doctype will throw many browsers into "quirks mode", which causes big differences when writing CSS. Doctype switching is a concept that's been around for the past five or six years. --Bogtha 17:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Fact of the matter is, unless you're a geek striving to make sure that all the terminology used to describe a programming language because you've programmed with it for 20 years is perfect, than that tutorial is perfectly fine for any newcomer. - 72.141.0.76 20:31, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Wait a second, do I 'know crap all about HTML', or am I an expert that has been using it for 20 years? Make your mind up.

The fact is, like Rufous says, terminology matters. If a newbie doesn't know the proper names for things, they'll be lost when they look things up in the specification, or try to use a search engine to find more information. And mixing up two entirely different concepts, structure and syntax, is indefensible when you are trying to teach newbies. Oh, and anybody calling HTML or XHTML 'programming languages' is in no position to tell others what is and isn't a good tutorial, because they are in dire need of reading a good one themselves. --Bogtha 17:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

HTML is not a programming language, and terminology does matter. This tutorial is inadequate and misleading, and your attempts to defend it are only making it worse. Rufous 22:17, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Semantics man! It is a programming language. Maybe not in the traditional sense, but you are still programming, and it's still a language. Me defending someones tutorial has nothing to do with making it better or worse. Man you geeks are on crack or something to be pushing so much semantics when it doesn't matter. If you have a chunk of code and someone says "That there isn't an element, its a tag", it will not make the code suddenly not work.

No, but what it will do is confuse two very important concepts in a newbie's mind. And isn't what the newbie learns from the tutorial the most important thing in judging whether a tutorial is worthwhile or not? --Bogtha 17:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

Either way I understand its not that great from the perspectives of someone that probably has several years less experience with html than myself. I will relay your comments to the original author for him to make improvements. - 72.141.0.76 06:02, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

If you aren't yourself the original author of this tutorial, I can't help but feel you have done the author a disservice by advocating it here while demonstrating your ignorance of the subject. Rufous 13:13, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I too believe that you are the original author, and I don't believe for a second you have several years experience, let alone several years more than I. That would be more than enough time to figure out the right names for things, and clearly you are still at the stage where you call everything a 'tag'. --Bogtha 17:41, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

I am not the original author, but I am the co-admin on that website. I myself have been programming (Or coding, if it makes a world of difference) HTML since a very young age. About 13 years now.

I am the original author, and I am sorry for my friend shit-talking. Fact is, that is a vary rough tutorial that I wrote up without regard for proper wording or syntax. It's simple there until I code in a tutorial submission section at which point I'll do it properly. - Floydian

Removed security risks

This is ridiculous.. this is the second time the section on "Security risks" has been deleted. Look, HTML itself has no security holes. If we ignored the fact that ActiveX and JavaScript exist, which are not part of HTML, then all HTML does is describe the presentation of information (please see introduction). Calling HTML insecure is as ridiculous as saying "SMTP is insecure because it causes viruses to come through my Outlook program." --Sean κ. ⇔ 18:48, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

To clarify: there is a security risk involved in embedding media within a web page. However, a browser can render HTML validly by replacing all media with a black rectangle, thus it is not a problem with HTML itself. This does not have any bearing on the discussion of including HTML in Wikipedia, above. --Sean κ. ⇔ 19:01, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

nonetheless they are issues that affect all real world use of html. Should we ignore them completely? should we move them to a seperate article and put it in see-also? or what? Plugwash 01:33, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'll look around. Most likely, they should be under "Security risks of web browsing" or "Security risks of using Internet Explorer/Firefox/whatever". --Sean κ. ⇔ 01:54, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Acronym instead of full name.

Why is the name of this article HTML, and not HyperText Markup Langauage (I don't know certainly about capitalization and such, but you get the idea)? See CSS for example. Why does this differ?

Well, one of the key reasons for CSS being spelt out is that CSS is a disambiguation page - that is, there are multiple meanings of "CSS" which are equally deserving of Wikipedia articles; this is not, of course, true of "HTML". This then leaves us with the overarching convention stated at the top of Wikipedia:Naming conventions:

Generally, article naming should give priority to what the majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature.

I think "HTML" fits these general principles - it's far more recognisable than the expansion, unambiguous, and most likely to be what people will type as the link. A seperate page for Wikipedia:Naming conventions (acronyms) also takes this view - the acronym should be spelt out "unless the term you are naming is almost exclusively known only by its acronyms and is widely known and used in that form"

[BTW, both Hypertext Markup Language and HyperText Markup Language redirect here, with 3 and 1 links to them, respectively]

I hope this seems a reasonable justification. - IMSoP 14:29, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

external link policy

Policy

recently there have been a number of links added by anons which i have removed for being imo mediocre quality and possible self promotion.

imo the current external links here are a bit of a mess we need to clearly divide them in to offical and unofficial stuff and then go through the unoffical stuff justifying why each link is relavent. Otherwise i fear we will either drown in a sea of interwiki links or end up with the links basically frozen by reverts. Plugwash 18:19, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. This article is in pretty good shape compared to other articles, but it is certainly a tempting place to add link spam. Rl 19:04, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

I am of the opinion that we should remove all links except for those to the W3C. The rest, being unofficial, are therefore not encyclopedic. This isn't the place to advertise tutorials. The one exception may be W3Schools, but it's no more official than the rest. —Sean κ. ⇔ 19:39, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

I disagree. I'm familiar with most HTML tutorials on the web and most of them are pretty mediocre. Spotting the links that don't belong is easy. Enforcing a link policy like this that doesn't formally exist elsewhere in Wikipedia will not drive down the time needed to filter the poor links. (Disclosure: I'm the webmaster of HTMLSource) Rufous 08:21, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

I support having a few(!) links to good tutorials outside W3C but we do need some decent method for determining what's in and what's out, and I don't agree that this is easy. Documenting for every link (say, by adding a comment) why it is there would be a good start. I regularly remove link spam from articles, but that's often a tricky task especially if the subject is not familiar (and unfortunately, link spam turns also up on articles that don't get patroled by knowledgeable people often enough). Rl 08:56, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

I just feel like anyone capable of searching for "HTML" on Wikipedia is also capable of searching for "HTML tutorials" on Google, which is the proper tool for that sort of thing. I'm also of the opinion that if people want to learn HTML, or any web design topic, they're best off going to the library and getting a book, since it is difficult to learn when you have to keep ALT-TABbing between browser windows. —Sean κ. ⇔ 11:22, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

There is a lot of useful information on WP (especially links) that might as well be googled. OTOH, WP is not a web directory. <shrug> If you guys can agree on something, I can go with any decision. In this case, all I care about is that the article doesn't contain an endless list of links and not even a rough guideline to remove the junk. Rl 11:46, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

How about this:

1. Every link should be annotated, and,
2. If a link can't have more than two meaningful sentences written about it, it shouldn't be included.

Seems like a good rule in general. —Sean κ. ⇔ 17:48, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Actual links

ok here are the links from the misc section along with some comments on each feel free to add (and sign) your own comments on each. Plugwash 09:50, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

First off, thanks for starting the actual work. As far as I am concerned, you can very well go ahead and remove links from the article based on your impression or the discussion here. Let me also state that I don't claim this is a vote. I am just adding my comments because it's a good way to get establish some consensus in this grey area. Rl 10:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm going to voice my opinion again that books are the best way to learn anything about web site construction. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the name of the book I learned from (it was called "{Teach yourself, Learn} HTML in n Days", where n is one of 7, 14, or 21. I believe it was about HTML 2). Anyone know any good ones? —Sean κ. ⇔ 00:12, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Interesting. HTML is one the few languages for which I never cosidered buying a book. There isn't that much to learn in plain HTML, there are plenty of tutorials on the web, and you can always look at the source of well-designed sites to learn more. Also, unlike say C or Perl, there doesn't seem to be the standard reference book everyone uses. Nothing stands out. Thus, I'd rather not mention any books. Rl 07:44, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

ISO 8859-1 Table with HTML Entity Names

• ASCII - ISO 8859-1 Table with HTML Entity Names
  • looks old dodgy and misleadingly titled but we might wan't to make sure we have all this infomation elsewhere with appropriate links before removing it Plugwash 09:50, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • There should be a better source for this but I don't have one at hand. Rl 10:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • W3C's reference is more official, though hard to read. —Sean κ. ⇔ 16:22, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • No kidding. Maybe we should write our own, easy to read, version? It ain't rocket science, after all. Rl 16:28, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
      • Good call. There really aren't that many that need to be included, just &gt;, &lt;, &aacute;, and so on. Everything else can be created by knowing the Unicode number. I don't have time to make it nice, but maybe something like...

Actually, we should probably just link to Unicode and HTML and spruce it up a bit. —Sean κ. ⇔ 16:58, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, the goal should be a complete list. But maybe somebody will fill in the rest if we create a page with a bunch of important examples. Unicode and HTML could contain a link to the same page. List of HTML entity names maybe? Rl 17:15, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good, though using W3C's reference, I count on the order of 200 named entities. Not a small task. —Sean κ. ⇔ 17:31, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

I've made one of those tables before; if you know your regular expressions it's not too tricky. I'd remove the link completely instead of replacing it. This is more at home in Character encodings in HTML, which is already under "see also." Rufous 18:08, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Good point. There's even a link to a readable version on that page. I removed this external link as well. Rl 19:03, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

On that note do you think we should do some kind of series box for web related articles so its easy to find all the info that we do have on html? Plugwash 22:10, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

I am leaning towards no at this point, for two reasons:

1. The sheer number of web related articles makes it a cumbersome task, best tackled by a WikiProject.
2. Who is the target audience? People who want to learn how to design a web page? I don't think we should be writing to them, just like the Pottery page shouldn't be writing to people wanting to make pottery. I think we should be writing to people who use this page as a reference or to get an overview of the topic, in which case a series box for web related articles might not be as useful as, say, a series box for W3C recommendations.

—Sean κ. ⇔ 23:25, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

thing is we have quite a few articles describing different things about html. By putting them together as a series people can easilly find all the info we have on the subject. If we are going to have lots of info on a subject may as well try and keep it in a form thats easy to navigate. Plugwash 23:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

I'll just pretend that you said "we should do some kind of series box for HTML related articles", and that I never said anything ;) —Sean κ. ⇔ 23:52, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

There is now a HTML series template and a List of XML and HTML character entity references article. — mjb 23:13, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

NCSA's Beginner's Guide to HTML

• NCSA's Beginner's Guide to HTML
  • iirc the ncsa was a major html pioneer so i think this can stay. Plugwash 09:50, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd rather remove this. It's ancient. A lot has happened since it was last updated. This is not History of HTML tutorials. Rl 10:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd also support removing this. Certainly, it was a very important tutorial 6 years ago, but it's ancient. Rufous 15:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Any tutorial that still says, "The </P> closing tag may be omitted. This is because browsers understand that when they encounter a <P> tag, it means that the previous paragraph has ended. However, since HTML now allows certain attributes to be assigned to the <P> tag, it's generally a good idea to include it." [1] should not be included, IMO. —Sean κ. ⇔ 17:36, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Removed. Rl 17:56, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

HTMLSource: HTML Tutorials

• HTMLSource: HTML Tutorials
  • a html tutorial... what if anything is special about it Plugwash 09:50, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I'd remove all tutorials here, but I'd support keeping/adding a link to a tutorial if knowledgable people can agree on something. Rl 10:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • My site. I firmly believe it to be the best site for beginners available. Rufous 15:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Fair enough. I appreciate open disclosure, so I don't mind that it's your site. However, I'd appreciate if someone less partial could chime in. Rl 16:19, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • I think this has sound and up-to-date content, which unfortunately is made a bit hard to follow by the formatting. Not perfect, but good. Aapo Laitinen 18:23, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)
  • Seems pretty good (aside from referring to things as "tags" :p). ¦ Reisio 19:59, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Dave's HTML Code Guide

• Dave's HTML Code Guide
  • another html tutorial... Plugwash 09:50, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Outdated. Rufous 15:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Outdated, nowadays harmful. Suggest remove. Aapo Laitinen 18:23, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)
  • Removed. ¦ Reisio 19:55, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

HTML Dog

• HTML Dog
  • some kind of guide. Is there anything special about it?
  • Nothing special. Remove. Rl 10:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • A good site, clean and up to date, and teaches CSS straight out of the gate. There's some crossover between HTMLSource and this, but I think it should stay. Rufous 15:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • We have a separate article on Cascading Style Sheets with its own link section that is (surprise, surprise) too long. I don't see the need for CSS tutorials in this article even though they are related. Rl 16:19, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Excellent, with very little to wish for (should talk more about validation and XML, I think). If there are going to be tutorial links here, this should stay. Aapo Laitinen 18:23, 2005 Jun 12 (UTC)

Web Standards Awards

• Web Standards Awards
  • who runs theese awards and are they respected enough to deseve a place here
  • If it's notable, someone will add an article for it. Then we could add a "see also" link (maybe see also List of Web Awards or something). For now, I'd remove this as well.
  • Yeah, this shouldn't be here. Rufous 15:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Removed. Rl 16:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

W3schools HTML tutorial/reference

• W3schools HTML tutorial/reference
  • who/what are w3schools is there anything special about them that means we should favour this link over others
    • it is not important who/what they are. important is that they have very good, up to date, clearly written tutorials on html, css, JavaScript and many many more. I am adding this link again. 83.31.15.222
      • Removed again. Rl 7 July 2005 08:36 (UTC)
        • 7 July 2005 08:34 Rl: "(rv to last version by 69.138.24.96; we had a consensus for removal of the w3schools.com link)". i disagree. we don't have a consensus. it's a valuable link. and, please, RI, don't name my changes vandalisms. thank you. 83.31.15.222
          • a) Try and convince other editors that the tutorials at this address should be there. I don't really care much about any of those links (the only one I liked was rejected), but we can't have single editors add external links just because they claim the source is valuable. b) I don't think I ever named any of your changes vandalism. Rl 7 July 2005 11:04 (UTC)
  • Nothing special. Remove. Rl 10:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Removed. Rl 16:21, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Removed again. —Sean κ. + 17:28, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Again. ¦ Reisio 22:20, 12 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Inconsistent in quality, with hardly any consideration of semantics. Used to be one of the better ones, but hasn't kept up with times and is nowadays non-notable. Removed again. Aapo Laitinen 18:22, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

WebMonkey HTML tutorial

• WebMonkey HTML tutorial
  • same question as with other tutorials is this special enough to keep? Plugwash 22:17, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

• I seem to remember that it was once a well-known resource, but now it's hard to find the content among the ads. I doesn't seem to offer anything over what we already have. Therefore I'd say remove. Rl 22:40, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
• Though it pains me to say it (I am/was a big fan of Webmonkey), this has probably been superseded by more modern tutorials. Rufous 23:54, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

• Removed. Rl 14:09, 27 May 2005 (UTC)

The Bare Bones Guide to HTML

• The Bare Bones Guide to HTML
  • Not to add to the confusion, but I found this a valuable resource back when I did some HTML related coding. Apparently it's been translated to 21 languages which I guess says something about its notability. Rl 10:43, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Also outdated. Rufous 15:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
    • Interesting. The site claims it's up to HTML 4, which AFAICT is the latest version of HTML. Rl 16:19, 20 May 2005 (UTC)
      • True, it's up to date spec-wise. It just doesn't have much educational content since it's a plain reference. Though obviously that's the aim, it doesn't make it very useful in this context. Other sites offer interpretation of the specs as well, which is very important. Rufous 23:54, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

pjf.org.uk

• Free XHTML and CSS website template with FAQs and instructions on how to add your own content. This seems to be the bit that textbooks leave out.--Peterf 4 July 2005 14:45 (UTC)
  • Haha, good one. Rufous 5 July 2005 14:50 (UTC)

Webmonkey HTML cheat sheet

• The HTML Cheatsheet is a very shallow resource; surely there are better ones out there. And, as was pointed out by someone who attempted to remove the link, it contains some deprecated attributes that, while perhaps still widely used, would be a disservice to the Web to continue to encourage. I think it would be nice to have one link to a 'cheat sheet' of some sort, but can anyone provide good reasons to keep this one above all others? (also see above discussion re: the Webmonkey tutorial) — mjb 23:05, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Agreed. Basically my feeling is that deprecated or not, you are conforming to the W3C's way of thinking - you may as well be conforming to what the web will actually be supporting. That said, I've no problem with a link marked "Information on deprecated elements" or the like - but even better would be a small section within the article covering/listing them. Regardless, this link is a sorry one, because it doesn't make the distinction between deprecated and not. ¦ Reisio 03:25, 2005 July 30 (UTC)
  • Remove it. --minghong 04:09, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

htmlhelp.org

• Would anyone object to adding a link to The Web Design Group's HTML Help resources? Their HTML guides in particular are thorough, very accurate, and 'socially' responsible. I have used their offline versions for years. — mjb 23:04, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
  • Looks a lot like the w3.org spec (which is already listed), but at least that means it's not bad. ¦ Reisio 03:30, 2005 July 30 (UTC)

HTML Goodies

I'd like to nominate HTML Goodies as a tutorial site. It has helped me with all the basic stuff I need to know about HTML.—King Bob324 15:38, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

draac.com

• i find this site very helpful on a day-to-day basis, easy to use tutorials and various java/html generators, i think it deserves a place on the list --Chickendude 03:24, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
  • Uses HTML 3.2 doctype along with a bunch of HTML 4 mixed in - front page does not validate. Teaches nothing about doctype usage. Teaches usage of breaks instead of CSS for positioning. Teaches invalid use of elements. Marquee tag? IE-only code? Not even going to bother investigating anymore. No, no, and no. ¦ Reisio 05:49, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

misc section

Oh, and by the way, let's get rid of the "misc" external links section. It is an open invitation for people to add all kind of unrelated stuff. Rl 10:46, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

It's now "tutorials", which seems apt. Also, the validators section only really needs two entries: those for the W3C and HTMLHelp validators. Rufous 15:20, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

Except that several of the links there don't fit the description "Tutorials" :-). I removed two of them where the three of us who have participated in the discussion seem to clearly agree. Rl 16:07, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

repetitive

"...HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a hypertext markup language..."

Sounds a little odd if you ask me.

what about something like "...HTML stands for HyperText markup language..."

--Atomican 16:46, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Sofixit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Be_bold_in_updating_pages ¦ Reisio 19:27, 2005 August 6 (UTC)

Reverted edit by 24.154.6.44

I reverted the edit by User:24.154.6.44, since it referred to Notepad (completely unrelated), talked of things in tag level (should talk of enclosing things in elements, not surrounding them with tags), did not mention DTD, and <HTML> by itself was a bit of trivia. However, that got me thinking if there should be a section about the typical structure of a HTML document (<html>, <head>, <body> and all)? Aapo Laitinen 19:42, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Indexed HTML

Where would I go from here to find out about indexed HTML within wikipedia? HTMLDOC[2] says it makes such a file, but documentation is scarce. Hackwrench 16:36, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

You most likely mean a HTML file with a Table of Contents, since it seems that's what HTMLDOC is used for--generating PDF / HTML files with indexed headings / pages. -- Parasti 23:57, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

Intro picture

I don't disagree with including a picture in the lead section of the article, but the current picture not only shows JavaScript but focuses on it. Aapo Laitinen 21:20, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

• I've changed it to one without JavaScript. --Tysto 23:37, 15 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I've changed to a more semantic one. --minghong 02:01, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
    • That doesn't look more semantic to me. "<span id="time">&nbsp;</span>"? Just because you saw a table tag in there doesn't mean it's not semantic! :-) In fairness, neither example is, but I think the first one looked nicer. Rufous 13:37, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
      • I think they're all goofy as hell. :) ¦ Reisio 16:07, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

WP:ASR

Wouldn't the Wikipedia:WikiProject Usability/HTML link in See also be considered self-reference? I'm a relatively new user, so I'm not quite sure what all qualifies as a self-ref. NapoleonB 17:35, 31 March 2006 (UTC)