Hey Everyone!
Complete noob post here…
I’m just getting started with HTML5. I’m reading a book on the subject. I’m confused with an otherwise straightforward statemenet in the book:
HTML5 needs to support existing content, even if most existing content is a complete mess.
What does that mean? How does HTML5 support existing content? Can someone give me an example?
Thanks!
It means it doesn’t break old stuff. You can still render a page from 1995 mostly the way it was meant to be rendered in 1995.
Thanks for your insight! So do you mean that browsers capable of supporting HTML5 also support the HTML 4 spec? If so, it sounds like more of a browser thing then (that they’re developed backwards compat), and less of a responsibility of the language itself.
Or… do you mean the HTML author can reproduce the same page in HTML 4 in HTML 5?
Any added insight is appreciated!
Thanks!
Yes w3c specs not only give guidelines for how things should be written, but guidelines on how they should be rendered by the browser.
I think you can do this too, but I’m not sure. There are probably people here who know more about this than me. I know for the large majority of thingsyou can use HTML4 elements under an HTML5 doctype.
Most web pages are still written using HTML 3.2 or earlier. It is because HTML 4 became a standard in 1997 and most people still haven’t upgraded to using it that the code flagged in 1997 as deprecated in HTML 4 (to be removed completely in HTML 5) have now had their status downgraded to “obsolete” - meaning that you are still not supposed to use them but browsers are still required to support them and not to drop support for them as was the original intention.
Yes. As said above, browsers will continue to support older versions of HTML. Even most elements that have long been deprecated are still supported. The only one I know for sure is dead and buried is the blinking <blink> element.