Is HTML on Its Way Out?

Origin: NewsFactor Network
Source: Mike Martin - www.newsfactornetwork.com,
Date: October 09, 2002


Introduction

A mere eight years ago, the "HT" in HTML stood as much for "hot" as it did for "hypertext." This language of the Internet was on everyone's lips, from bedroom coders to boardroom capitalists. Now, though, "X" is slowly starting to mark the hypertext spot as XML, XHTML and other, more sophisticated Internet languages nimbly supplement -- and in some cases supplant -- their older and stodgier cousin.
This is not to say HTML has slipped entirely into the shadows. "It's very unlikely that HTML is going away soon," Jeff Offutt, an information and software engineering professor at George Mason University, told NewsFactor. "All Web browsers are based on HTML and will be for the foreseeable future."

Universal, But Not Perfect

In a nutshell, HTML "is a way to mark up text and add pictures, links and tables to display content within a Web browser," Mark Frydenberg, a computer information systems instructor at Bentley College, told NewsFactor. "When a Web server receives a request for a page, the page is processed and HTML is sent back to the browser."

But although HTML is widely used, it has several deficiencies, largely stemming from its origins as a no-frills tool rather than a power user's panacea.

"When there was only one Web browser and one operating system, the task of developing HTML that would render on the device appropriately was straightforward," Pinnacle Decision Systems emerging technology specialist Michael Pelletier told NewsFactor. In contrast, he said, "When new browsers, implementing different features on different operating systems with different screen resolutions, became the norm, the process by which the developer created the HTML content became exceedingly difficult."

CSS to the Rescue

Fortunately, standards that complement HTML, such as cascading style sheets (CSS), have helped developers reduce the burden of complex Web site maintenance. For example, a Web developer using CSS might be able to tweak the design of an entire site by changing a single style sheet, rather than by changing design elements on each page of the site.

"CSS allows the developer to compartmentalize positioning and aesthetic markup information, creating documents that are both easier to read and easier to maintain," Ashley Warren, a Web developer at Adamson Advertising in St. Louis, Missouri, told NewsFactor. So important is this design tool that "the penetration of cascading style sheets throughout the development community will have one of the largest impacts on the future coding of Web sites."

X Marks Up the Spot

Alongside standards like CSS, complementary markup languages also have evolved -- most notably XML, or extensible markup language.

"XML and HTML are independent and complementary," Offutt said. "HTML describes how to present data, and XML describes the content of data."

As such, the two languages solve different problems.

"The primary problem with HTML is that a single HTML page is an aggregation of both data to be displayed to the user and processing instructions for the browser as to how it should be rendered," Pelletier explained. "By separating the data from the rendered display and storing it in an XML document, we can utilize the same information over and over."

All About XML

Two models have arisen for developers working with XML, according to Vernon Imrich, chief technology officer of Massachusetts-based Percussion Software. "One called 'DOM,' or Document Object Model, provides an object-oriented interface, so that the XML structures can be processed in familiar Web programming environments, such as JSP (Java) and ASP (VB and VB.Net)," he explained.

But "writing native DOM code from scratch can be daunting," Imrich added. The second approach, which uses a technology called XSLT (extensible stylesheet language transformations), "provides a very powerful conversion capability, which can be plugged into any type of application, providing the ability to rapidly change the presentation or to add new presentation channels -- without recoding the entire application."

Rather than replacing HTML, XML "will help to extend the life of HTML considerably as a presentation markup language," Imrich concluded. "It is far easier to convert XML into HTML than [into] any other formats, because of the fundamental similarities."

Hypertext: The Next Generation

In fact, "the next generation of HTML markup is what is called XHTML," Pelletier explained. "XHTML is the convergence of XML and HTML in a standardized fashion."

Used in tandem with CSS, XHTML allows designers "to more easily repurpose the same content for multiple display types," Web developer Jeff Campbell of DreamHost Web Hosting told NewsFactor, "whether they be standard computer monitors, small PDA displays or screen readers for the visually impaired. Only a single copy of the content is needed."

Designs on Tomorrow's Designers

So, even though Web designers will have to master some new tools in the future, they will do so in slow and evolutionary -- rather than revolutionary -- steps, according to Campbell. HTML is not likely to find itself out in the cold anytime soon.

Coders will have to stay sharp, however, by mastering XML -- and XML conversion.

"XML-aware conversion languages, such as XSLT, will become critical to converting XML into human-readable pages," Imrich said. "Developers and designers who master these languages will have a critical leg up in the marketplace."

New Skills Required

Unlike in the TV show "X-Files," what you see is what you will get in the brave new world of Internet "X" files, Alden Hart, CTO of the Adrenaline Group, told NewsFactor.

"Ultimately, new tools will generate the styles from the WYSIWYG design layer, so XML/XSLT won't change the skill set for many designers," Hart explained. "However, to do more advanced things and to debug pages, XML and XSLT will be a core skill set that is required."