1.3 In Medias Res 131.3.2 What Has Become Obsolete?
When discussing the innovations in HTML5, we should also determine which
features we should no longer use. The term deprecated is frequently used in oth-
er W3C specifications in this context, but this term is not appropriate in the case
of HTML5. Because HTML5 is backward compatible, such features also have to
be displayed correctly by the browser. For the author of a web page, however, the
specification of differences from HTML4 offers a list of elements and attributes
that should or may no longer be used. The term absent now replaces the term
deprecated.
If you look at the wordle in Figure 1.4, you can see that the elements font and
center are definitely out. They are replaced by more up-to-date CSS solutions,
and the same applies to the elements u, big, strike, basefont, and tt. Now,
iframes replaces frame, frameset, and noframes; instead of acronym you should
now use abbr, instead of dir you should use ul, and isindex is abandoned in fa-
vor of the better options offered by forms. If you are wondering why some of the
elements mentioned do not appear in the wordle, this is due to the fact that they
were used very infrequently and are therefore no longer part of HTML5.
For obsolete attributes, the picture is equally clear. Dominant in the wordle in
Figure 1.5 are width, height, alignment (align, valign), spacing (cellpadding,
cellspacing) , and coloration (bgcolor). They appear mostly in combination
with table, td, or body and are now replaced by CSS, like many of the obsolete
elements.
Figure 1.4 Elements no longer used in HTML5