Deprecated tags

Deprecated tags

wót Petrik Oud -
Anzahl Antworten: 4

Sorry if this is covered elsewhere. I didn't find it in my searching if it was.

Maybe I'm crying wolf here. But things like the font tag (as I've just used with the word font) are deprecated. However the html editor within moodle uses these deprecated tags. I'm wondering what the long term implications are going to be with our staff creating resource after resource with deprecated tags.

Has anyone even considered this? Or am I just freaking out about nothing?

Mittelwert: -
Als Antwort auf Petrik Oud

Re: Deprecated tags

wót Janne Mikkonen -
In IE the font tag is indeed widely used and this is because the contenteditable mode in IE is based on MSHTML.dll and it's very old (back from times before internet).

Perhaps IE7 gomes along with better contenteditable (and xhtml compatible) mode...


Mittelwert: -
Als Antwort auf Janne Mikkonen

Re: Deprecated tags

wót Ammon Shepherd -
I would like to encourage the abolishment of deprecated tags like FONT.  The same effect can be exactly achieved by using the SPAN tag.  Wouldn't it be a (relatively) simple thing to change the HTMLArea code to use SPAN in place of FONT?

On a related, but more style-based issue, the use of outdated HTML parameters and their values in HTML tags should be replaced with the CSS STYLE parameter.  This is a bit trickier, but should be implemented to preserve standards compatibility.


Thanks,
Ammon


Mittelwert: -
Als Antwort auf Ammon Shepherd

Re: Deprecated tags

wót Andi Ye -

Hi Ammon...

I go along with a part of what you said.  <FONT> is deprecated for some good reasons, in favour of CSS controls.  But CSS isn't a "related issue", it's the same issue... the only means of replacing <FONT> with <SPAN> or <DIV> is by using them to embed or refer to CSS controls.

What is more, the biggest gain for replacing <FONT> with CSS controls is to liberate a page from its formatting, thus allowing a page or a whole site to take on almost any appearance by swapping or modifying a stylesheet.  That worthy objective isn't achieved by moving the effects applied by the <FONT> tag into the Style attribute of a <SPAN>/<DIV> tag.  Rather the <SPAN>/<DIV> tag must be given a Class and/or ID which is referenced in an external stylesheet.

Little is ever cut and dry, however.  CSS controls are often not read by mobile devices which will happily read a <FONT> tag.  Ultimately all formatting, from the layout of a page to the borders around a table should be under the control of a stylesheet; but "preserve standards compatibility" is a slightly dangerous phrase, since the CSS controls are often less cross-browser compliant than the alternative HTML controls.

In fact, Petrik, taking full advantage of styles in the HTML editor is not an easy business, because it should mean that the editor reads all the styles from CSS files and embedded within the <HEAD> section of the document, puts them into a drop-down menu of the editor for selection, and somehow applies them faithfully within the editor WYSIWYG view.  At the end of the day, <FONT> is deprecated, but I doubt it's going to exit stage left and leave us in the lurch any time soon.

Best regards

- Andi

Mittelwert: -