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The Current State of HTML

In this section you will explore the evolution of HTML and its future as a markup language for creating Web documents.  You will analyze current design limitations of HTML, the need for style sheets that allow separation of style from structure, and the usage of hypertext as a means for organizing information.

HTML:  Then and Now

When Tim Berners-Lee first proposed HTML at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) in 1989, he was looking for a way to manage and share large amounts of information among colleagues.  As the idea developed, Berners-Lee named the mesh the World Wide Web.  He created an application of the Standard

Generalized Markup Language (SGML), a standard system for specifying document structure, and called it the Hypertext Markup Language. 

When Berners-Lee created HTML, he adopted only the elements of SGML necessary for representing basic office documents such as memos and reports.  The need for new markup languages and standards to address these demands is handled by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

HTML and the World Wide Web Consortium

After the initial surge of interest in HTML and the Web, a need arose for a standards organization to set recommended practices that would guarantee the open nature of the Web.  The W3C was founded in 1994 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to meet this need.  The W3C, led by Tim Berners-Lee, sets standards for HTML and provides an open, non-proprietary forum for industry and academic representatives to add to the evolution of this new medium. 

The Limitations of HTML

HTML is a markup language, a structured language that lets you identify common sections of a document such as headings, paragraphs, and lists.  An HTML file includes text and HTML markup elements that identify these sections.  The HTML markup elements indicate how the document sections appear in a browser.  For example, the <h1> element tags in the following code indicate that the text is first-level heading:

<h1>Welcome to My Web Page</h1>

HTML adopts many features of SGML, including the cross-platform compatibility that allows different computers to download and read the same file from the Web.  HTML is not a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) layout tool.  It was intended only to express logical document structure, not formatting characteristics.  Because HTML was not designed as a layout language, many editing programs create less-than-standard code to accomplish a certain effect.  You cannot rely on the HTML editor’s WYSIWYG view to test your Web pages.  Despite its limitations, HTML is ideal for the Web because it is an open, non-proprietary, cross-platform compatible language.

The Need for Style Sheets

Browser developers to help HTML authors bypass the design limitations of HTML introduced style elements such as <font>.  Designers and writers who are accustomed to working with today’s full-featured word processing programs want the same ability to manipulate and position objects precisely on a Web page as they can on the printed page.  Mixing style information within the structure, as is the case in most of the Web today, limits the cross-platform compatibility of the content.  Whether you come to the Web with a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), a Personal Communication Services (PCS) telephone, or Windows CE device, the Web server can determine the type of requesting device and supply a style sheet that matches the device.

This separation of style and structure was accomplished in 1996 by the W3C’s specification for a Web style language.  The style language, named Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), allows authors to create style rules for elements and express them externally in a document known as a style sheet. 

To understand why PHP 5 came to exist, it’s necessary to quickly review the evolution of PHP as a language.

When Rasmus Lerdorf created PHP back in 1995, it wasn’t even called PHP—his Personal Home Page/Forms Interpreter language was known as PHP/FI. At the time, PHP/FI’s main focus was solving small-time web tasks: guest books, hit counters, and basic forms processing. Its major benefit was its simplicity; PHP/FI made it easy to handle all the messy tasks thrown at a web developer. Additionally, it’s C-like syntax was already understood by many programmers.

Over the next two years, PHP/FI gradually grew in popularity. However, by 1997, PHP/FI was already showing its age. As the Internet gathered steam, programmers began to create more complex applications, such as e-commerce shopping carts. PHP/FI’s quirks and limitations hindered development. It was too slow and was missing some basic features, such as for and foreach loops.

These problems caused Zeev Suraski and Andi Gutmans, of Zend fame, to begin work on a new version of PHP/FI. This version, which became PHP 3, solved many difficulties faced by PHP/FI developers while remaining true to the essential nature of PHP/FI.

In particular, PHP 3 was faster and more efficient than PHP/FI. The new parser also provided the opportunity to iron out some language oddities, making PHP more consistent. PHP 3’s other major advance was an easy-to-use extension API. Developers from all over contributed extensions to PHP, effectively turning PHP from a programming language into an entire web development environment.

PHP 3 retained PHP/FI’s procedural syntax, but it also introduced a very simplistic object-oriented syntax. Originally the result of a weekend hack, developers flocked to objects, much to the surprise of Zeev and Andi. Unfortunately, PHP 3 was ill-equipped to provide all the object-oriented features developers demanded.

A few months after PHP 3 went final in June of 1998, work started on PHP 4. Again, the problem was speed. The new extension infrastructure provided the opportunity to create larger and more complex web sites than ever imagined. In the words of Alan Greenspan, "irrational exuberance" was at hand.

While PHP 4 provided yet another burst of power, its secondary objective was backward compatibility. There was a strong emphasis on not breaking PHP 3 scripts under PHP 4. As a result, beefing up the core language was not a main focus of PHP 4. PHP 4 was released in May 2000, almost two years after PHP 3.

A lot has happened over the last four years. Perl may be the "duct tape of the Internet," but PHP is the real glue that holds the Web together. However, PHP still faces challenges. The problems of performance and flexibility have long been conquered, but now PHP is under attack from the twin foes of Java and C#.

Over the past 10 years, Java and C# have introduced advanced object-oriented programming concepts to web development. Yet in many ways, despite all the improvements, PHP 4.3 is still the same procedural language that Rasmus wrote a decade ago. PHP 5 finally grants developers their wish, providing a full set of object-oriented features.

These features, allow developers to more easily develop large-scale applications without resorting to the cumbersome workarounds necessary in PHP 4. They also let you write cleaner code that’s less error-prone and more maintainable.

The ‘readability’ of ideas depends on two factors:

1. Good staging and layout, so that each scene and important action is presented in the clearest and most effective way.

2. Good timing, so that enough time is spent preparing the audience for something to happen, then on the action itself, and then on the reaction to the action. If too much time is spent on any one of these things, the timing will be too slow and the audience’s attention will wander. If too little time is spent, the movement may be finished before the audience noticed it, and so the idea is wasted.

To judge these factors correctly depends upon an awareness of how the minds of the audience work. How quickly or how slowly do they react? How long will they take to assimilate an idea? How soon will they get bored? This requires a good knowledge of how the human mind reacts when being told a story. It is also important to remember that different audiences react in different ways. So, for instance, an educational film for children would be timed in a different way from an entertainment film for adults, which requires a much faster pace.

Animation has a very wide range of uses, from entertainment to advertising, from industry to education and from short films to features. Different types of animation require different approaches to timing.