I for one think that HTML as a languages by itself is getting kind of old and outdated but when you think of HTML with a dynamic language such as PHP which parses code to generate HTML the concept is very useful what do the other forum users think?

Nope, don't agree. HTML is hardly useless... what would you use instead ?
PHP only ADDS to HTML elements. Besides, not everyone wants to be a PHP programmer and not everyone can grasp programming anyway. I have no reason to use it and have no real desire to use it either. I crunched code for years.. in languages you've probably barely heard of.

HTML isn't going anywhere, they're developing specs for HTML 5 now.

NO! HTML is the only way to make a site work except for a couple other languages that work on one maybe 2 browsers. I personaly don't like using HTML but that is because i like writing programs that do something. But Without HTML there would be no websites. Without HTML you wouldn't be able to read this right here.

I think there would they would be made out of javascript and PERL or they would be html parsed from PHP

LadynRed

You are right. Yes, HTML 5 is going to be release, and also CSS 3. So I think that HTML will be around for some time.

The only way you would lose HTML, is if SGML was scraped. I dont think that would happen, because you would also lose XML AND XHTML.


All of you have made some good points here.




<notagz1>

I think that if you're making a 3 page information based website that using static html is fine & even probably the easier route.

However, if you're looking for user interaction with your website or you're going to build a larger website - I think that using html in perl/php is the way to go. All of my personal sites are backed by perl/cgi because I find it easier to add functionality to them plus it makes it a whole lot easier for sitewide updates.

Well CSS really guaranteed HTMLs existance for a long time... not going anywhere.

I dont think HTML is old and useless. I think it is essential to the web. Yes, they now have XHTML...but really, its still HTML. And HTML isnt really a programming language. It is a markup language. Together programming languages (like php) and HTML make the web what it is.

The question is too broad.
HTML (without ANY CSS, JavaScript, Server Side Language, etc.) alone is almost non-existent. And the times you do see it; it's most likely not going to be a good site. Why? Because It's better to have a team of different languages with different strong points working together than one. XHTML is definitely overtaking old HTML. Everywhere you look now you see XHTML not HTML.
If when you mean any form of HTML is getting old then you're out of your mind because show me a web site that doesn't have some HTML. It's impossible.
Overall no other web page formatting language will ever overtake and kill HTML because it has become so standard and always has been. Sure, there will be different forms of the language that make it more compliant with other things (XHTML with XML for example) and there will be more languages that will help HTML out (CSS) and things that can manipulate and add to it making it (JavaScript and Server Side Languages [ASP/PHP/etc.]) flashier, more dynamic, and hopefully more useful (ever see those annoying JS pop-ups? That's an example of using one of these technologies used in a bad, unproductive way).
It's just like the car. We started off with the Model T. They constantly broke down, didn't go fast enough and were small, INEFFICIENT (Microsoft to Linux lol), and not very PORTABLE (Like C++ to Java) (did you notice inefficient and portable there. Yup.). But now we have cars with 500 horsepower, tractors that can plow through anything, etc. It's just revisions, not deletions.
Well that's how I see it.

The oldest telephone you can find still works with the modern phone system. Html is about as grandfathered in as telephony.

All the server-side coding languages, like PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, Perl, Ruby on Rails and so on, emit html down to the client. FireFox doesn't care, or even know, how that html was generated.

There are two ways I can imagine html disappearing: Flash takes over completely, almost over night, or we move to a lot of different, proprietary desktop apps that talk to a series of web services, sort of like Outlook sends email over the internet, but doesn't check your position in Google.

Both of my web sites are static html. I might move the general photography site to a desktop based CMS, but something like that just doesn't make sense for my portrait site.

HTML is backbone of every web page.

HTML is great for what it is, formatting data. Think of a nutritional pyramid and how you would apply that to a programming pyramid. If we start with the base, PHP, Python, or some other server sided app. This has to work and do your business logic. They shouldn't care about data format or even know about HTML. HTML is Very important because it sits on the base. It takes the data from the server and structurally presents it in a logical way, HTML shouldn't care about presentation, just structuring data. The use of CSS then comes in to play. Its job is to take the well structured HTML and do all the work in making it visually look good. On the top of the pyramid is JavaScript. This is like the icing on the cake. It isn't necessary and your website should not depend on it to work, because it is controlled by the Client and the user may or may not be enabling JavaScript. If JavaScript is disabled your site should still Function..

I believe that HTML is a very important Role in web development. With the use of templating languages, such as Smarty or Kidd. We can use it properly with a server sided backend.

In brief, HTML is just a framework, a rather flexible framework, so it will never lose its vitality.

CSS and XHTML ,

Are now the way forward but HTML is not obsolete seeing as how W3C will still validate or not. In Dreamweaver is easy to make your pages from HTML to XHTML, just go to file -->convert -->XHTML --->done!

HTML has it's time and place. You can still use plain HTML if you want or you can use it coupled with all sorts of extra media i.e. css,java,php ASP and so forth. No it will always be there i think maybe just the usage will be less

HTML allows you to make one simple and yet stable construction to your site... and then you can use everything you want to fill in that construction... I completely agree with minkbulle

HTML (without ANY CSS, JavaScript, Server Side Language, etc.) alone is almost non-existent. And the times you do see it; it's most likely not going to be a good site.

I must completely disagree with these statements. Most of the sites we build are purely HTML with CSS and there is certainly nothing bad about our sites. They are done with clean, valid code and they are accessible. Where we need backend database functionality, we use .NET for those sections. Were it not for HTML, your PHP/.NET etc. would have no framework to output to.

XHTML is still HTML, so you cannot separate the two as if they were completely separate.

Originally Posted by goheadtry

html parsed from PHP

Your answering your own question with no, so all I ask is wtf are you getting at?
Yeah I use PHP, but it woudl be useless without the HTML. So would JavaScript or anything at all for that matter that I know. Is there anything except HTML that all web browsers accept as a valid language for websites?

XHTML is based off of HTML, and its a much cleaner version of HTML as well of having full support for css in the strict version. I don't see HTML going out of style anytime soon. PHP is difficult to learn and use if your simply gonna build static sites, as well as not being supported by most free hosts. HTML is the backbone of many smaller sites.

HTML, is and I hope always will be the simplest most generic cross-platform code - with so many additional capabilities (for example, who had heard of CSS 15 years ago?) - look at how well HTML has evolved without the need for huge money making "takeover bids" or re-proprierty buy outs, and it still does what it set out to be when it first arrived. To make information accessible to people using different computers, differing networks and living in different countries. Its evovled to allow/support JS, DHTML, XML, JavaApplets, VRML....how many other internet media affords the same?
I use Flash (previously Macromedia), Bryce (previously Metacreations, Corel, and now someone else...), Poser (previously Metacreations, someone else, now supplied by DAZ...but dont ask them for support...)...CAD, etc - anyone care to express the limitations of obj, lwo, cad, amapi, rhino, imagesoft, after effects, lightwave - all of these (IMHO) wonde