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PODeprecated HTML important to lower slope of learning curve?
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copied!<p>I am very well aware of the principles behind deprecating layout HTML like FONT, CENTER, etc., in favor of the more-or-less equivalent CSS.</p> <p>But, in reading the extensive amount of verbiage on this over the years, I've never read anything about what this does to the <em>teaching</em> of HTML, especially to those new to the entire concept of computer languages, markup, and metadata.</p> <p>I'm thinking of 4th and 5th graders, but there are many older people who fit this profile, too.</p> <p>Suppose one of these kids wants to build a website with things that kids like, such as colors, font families and sizes, formatting, and so on?</p> <p>In putting together a course for schoolchildren, I find they want to know about controlling presentation at about lesson 5, just after I've introduced paragraphs. But, this is no time to introduce CSS, as I haven't even gotten to attributes yet. Equal signs, colons, quotes, and brackets are still sea of confusing characters at this point.</p> <p>Trying to teach:</p> <pre><code><p style='text-align: center;'> </code></pre> <p>instead of</p> <pre><code><center> </code></pre> <p>just doesn't work. The students get discouraged and the course grinds to a halt.</p> <p>Worse, the two aren't equivalent, since the inline styles only apply to one tag, whereas the deprecated tag applies until ended. Introducing DIV to get around this is no real help, as it still suffers from taking the student down a complex path much too early.</p> <p>OK, so there must be a question in here at some point, right? ;-)</p> <p>How about this for a some questions:</p> <ol> <li><p>Has anyone actually taught HTML to 4th and 5th graders without using deprecated tags?</p></li> <li><p>Is anyone aware of any part of the various HTML standards development that included educational issues? (I'm not talking about education for highly motivated, somewhat technically-inclined adults here. I'm talking about HTML for kids and casual computer users.)</p></li> <li><p>Is anyone out there willing to agree with me that teaching deprecated HTML is a way to lower the slope of the learning curve?</p></li> <li><p>Reviewing in my mind the various reasons for deprecation, I can't see why, for example, deprecating CENTER is justified. While it has been removed from certain strict HTML standards, there will never be a browser that doesn't handle it. (Other than research tools.) While more powerful constructs exist, none of them are even close to as convenient to code. Thoughts on this issue?</p></li> </ol> <p>(Please, no responses along the lines of "let beginners use WYSIWYG editors". These kids want to learn HTML, not just post some pretty content. There's a big difference.)</p>

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