What Was So “Wrong” With HTML 3.2

And why recreating it with PRESENTATIONAL classes is just plain stupid.

I’ve wanted to write a better explanation of this for the folks who “weren’t there” but lacked a decent example to work from. That changed when I got pointed at this article about Abe Hiroshi’s outdated website. It’s fun to see all the hacks, accessibility flaws, and just plain gibberish — even by HTML 3.2 standards —commonplace to markup that was once the norm.

Before we dive too far into his site — and showing how more modern techniques are better — we need to review what HTML was originally created for, and what made HTML 3 a giant middle finger to that.

For those that complain I repeat things in my articles, buckle up kiddies. I’ll keep repeating it until you get it!

The Original Intent Of HTML

From day one HTML was about “semantic markup”. This flies in the face of a lot of nonsensical claims we hear about how semantics was something “new with HTML 4” — as I’ve said time and time again that’s utter poppycock. Ridiculous gibberish claim.

Most if not all of HTML 2/earlier tags had meanings based on professional writing standards. Numbered headings to break a page up into sections and subsections. Paragraphs for grammatical paragraphs of flow text. Lists for short…