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Pros and Cons of Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)?

15

Hey guys
Have got an ICT assignment to do as part of my BTEC which involves evaluating HTML, including some advantages and disadvantages. I've done all the basic ones, such as its ease of use for beginners and its compatibility across all browsers. However my brain seems to have stopped working this afternoon and I simply cannot think of any more pros and cons - help me please!

Thanks

(edited 14 years ago)

Reply 1

GiantKiwi

19

please name a browser which doesnt support HTML ¬.¬

Reply 2

Kidioteque

OP

15

JRobbins

...its compatibility across all browsers...

Thanks for your suggestion :|

Reply 3

MylesXD

you can do it in notepad :smile:

Reply 4

Bobifier

13

The internet is written in HTML. It's kind of big.

Reply 5

Jordan-Kirby

11

Hm, I was going to say that with the development HTML5 which is still in progress, while it is allowing for a vast quantity of new features its compatibility is fairly slow between different browsers, so testing can at times be an issue and time consuming. Obviously testing is always an issue, just in this case it takes a long time for browsers to add more HTML5 functionality.

(edited 14 years ago)

Reply 6

Benkh84

how about the fact that html allows you to use java applets, flash, css, javascript ( all different languages) within it and the browser, extremely practical how it can all be combined

(edited 14 years ago)

Reply 7

Kidioteque

OP

15

Cheers guys, that's helped a lot :smile:

Reply 8

daniel bergmann

7

Pros:
- Does not need to be compiled. So it's quick to develop in
- Easy to pick up. Syntax is simple and the structure of the language does not get too complicated
- OS independent. HTML files can be viewed on any OS, and will look (generally) the same (allowing for browser variation).
- Can incorporate other scripting languages like JavaScript for dynamically changing things client side or
PHP for dynamically changing things server side.
- Tolerant to syntax errors. I mean a lot more so than say programming in C++.

Cons:
- Does not need to be compiled during the writing process. Therefore it needs to be parsed by the browser during rendering every time. This adds time compared to if it was a binary executable but to be honest it isn't much of a con.
- No native support for videos. Considering it is now a multimedia distribution language as well as for page structure, this is quite limiting. Although HTML5 is introducing native video support
- No native support for audio. See above point
- Not as "clean" as XHTML. Tags remain open, attributes can be upper case. This makes things harder for the HTML parser as compared to parsing XHTML which should validate as an XML document.

These are just some points that came to mind just now. Hope you can use them! :smile:

Reply 9

Psyk

16

Con: Not the most bandwidth efficient format. Could be replaced with a binary format that would be much more compact. Maybe not that significant for most people, but I find pages on TSR can take a long time to load on 3G, even without any images.

Reply 10

Planto

16

Another con from the development perspective is that its dependence on local in-browser parsing means that there is no guarantee that a page will be displayed the same across all browsers.

Reply 11

laser

10

HTML isn't Turing complete, which is a big con.

Reply 12

Psyk

16

laser

HTML isn't Turing complete, which is a big con.

Think about what it was designed for though. It was never designed to be a programming language, it's for describing the layout of a page. Ok, now most websites can be thought of as applications, but using one language for programming the logic (php, javascript, etc.) and another for describing what the page looks like is a good thing in my opinion. It's always good to keep the logic separate from the visual design.

Reply 13

thegryphon

daniel bergmann

Pros:
- Does not need to be compiled. So it's quick to develop in
- Easy to pick up. Syntax is simple and the structure of the language does not get too complicated
- OS independent. HTML files can be viewed on any OS, and will look (generally) the same (allowing for browser variation).
- Can incorporate other scripting languages like JavaScript for dynamically changing things client side or
PHP for dynamically changing things server side.
- Tolerant to syntax errors. I mean a lot more so than say programming in C++.

Cons:
- Does not need to be compiled during the writing process. Therefore it needs to be parsed by the browser during rendering every time. This adds time compared to if it was a binary executable but to be honest it isn't much of a con.
- No native support for videos. Considering it is now a multimedia distribution language as well as for page structure, this is quite limiting. Although HTML5 is introducing native video support
- No native support for audio. See above point
- Not as "clean" as XHTML. Tags remain open, attributes can be upper case. This makes things harder for the HTML parser as compared to parsing XHTML which should validate as an XML document.

These are just some points that came to mind just now. Hope you can use them! :smile:

agreed. However, technically, PHP code can't be incorporated into HTML code. PHP can output HTML, though.

Psyk

Con: Not the most bandwidth efficient format. Could be replaced with a binary format that would be much more compact. Maybe not that significant for most people, but I find pages on TSR can take a long time to load on 3G, even without any images.

lol, it's true that binary formats would SLIGHTLY speed up page loading times, but your issue has nothing to do with HTML code: I suspect there is some JavaScript script running or just the server too much loaded

laser

HTML isn't Turing complete, which is a big con.

hardly a con at all. It does one thing (describe page layout) and it does it well enough. It's not a programming language, and it will never be -- how could it be one by the way?!

Reply 14

daniel bergmann

7

thegryphon

agreed. However, technically, PHP code can't be incorporated into HTML code. PHP can output HTML, though.

Ahh yes, correctly pointed out. My mistake. :smile:

Reply 15

Psyk

16

thegryphon

lol, it's true that binary formats would SLIGHTLY speed up page loading times, but your issue has nothing to do with HTML code: I suspect there is some JavaScript script running or just the server too much loaded

You might be right. Something is making it very slow to load pages, I don't know whether that's down the speed of the connection or something else.

Reply 16

AndyBursh

I would suggest another pro for the books: it's standardised. Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera all deal in the same version of HTML, though admittedly sometimes it feels like IE is speaking Dutch. There's no need to take (for the most part, right now) version differences in to consideration like you do with PHP at time - PHP4 vs PHP5 anybody?

Pros and Cons of Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML)?

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