HTML was never designed to do what it is being used for. It was originally a subset of SML, which was just supposed to be used to add generic formatting tags to book-like online documents.

What web-site operators need though, is as much control as possible over the placement of pictures and text, and make them appear the same on every machine, not "tailored" for each machine. The tailoring of HTML to different user configurations has become the great nightmare for website developers, who have to tweak their sites so they don't mutilated by browser tweaking.

Not to dismiss your idea, but with CSS style sheet you can already specify "absolute" positioning of elements on a web page. However, this process is needlessly complicated and messy.

I agree with you, and have felt for a long time that the web browser could be so much better. Keep the old browser for compatibilty and on-line books, but for any real web-site it would be so much easier to use the browser that you described. Just specify coordinates and the image or text or special effect. People with midget screens can just scroll to see anything off the edge of the screen! ..or the web site designer could make a button to select display resolution.

I'd join you in developing it, but I have something else I'm already working on. But if you finish it, I'll stand behind it and make my web page for it.

That's my 2 cents.

-Gilderoot

--TheGoop

Between Javascript and Java applets HTML has become useless. Nothing but a carrier for for these extra features that it was never designed for. And the result is that web pages have become battlegrounds for the big players, and any semblance of universiality is gone.

My idea is to build a new kind of browser that uses a new type of language. This language, instead of being written in order from top to bottom like a word processor, it will be based on placing objects (including blocks of text) based on coordinates on the page. This will have many advantages:

-Any object can be manipluated using similar commands
-A page would look the same on any browser written the same way.
-WYSIWIG page editors would be quite standard and easy to use.
-Arranging images on a page would be simple.
-Arranging text would be much easier as compared to using tables and alingments to achieve the desired effects.

Also this language would include the features we already see on professional pages without the need for a seperate scripting language. For example, mouseover images would be a simple matter compared to using javascript.

If you're interested in this project page me on icq, my number is 8464893. I need programmers, preferable with experience in VB5 or Delphi.

Most of you who replied argue that most of the features I'm talking about can be done with other systems already in place.

I know that. But what I'm talking about is making a format that does that all in a simpler way.

when a browser loads a page, it loads the html, which tells it to load the java script or tells it to load the java or the activeX or this and that etc etc etc.

What I'm talking about is incorporating most of the features provided by these things into one simple scripting language. Slower machines would be able to take advantage of these features, it would run faster and cleaner and be less prone to crashes than a conventional browser.

This is a freeware project, thats how I plan to get it into widespread use. For convienince it will have a built in option for converting a conventional html page into the new format. The newly generated page could then be edited until it looks right.