Microformats make HTML go POSH
So ol’ semantic HTML is getting a bit of a complex having a cousin with a cooler name, bad boy image and a bit of buzz behind it… people hardly know it is even there.
The worker bee in the background, semantic HTML is what has been making all this happen since the inception of modern browsers, so perhaps we can give it a little bit of credit?
Bring on the new buzzwords I say, and POSH is born. Documented by Tantek this term was coined by kwijibo on IRC a few weeks back.
Plain Old Semantic HTML is nothing new too many of us, but I guess the purpose here is to gather and bring it up to the next level. Promotion, education and structure to the best practice development many of us have been touting for the last few years.
I personally think this is a great idea. Whatever gets the idea out there and makes it more digestible to the masses works for me.
I work with a lot of different departments and outside the developer circuit not that many people really care about semantic markup.
If this incentive could change any of those attitudes or could get people requesting that you POSH their sites before you AJAX them (as inelegant as it sounds, but it happens) then this might be a good thing.
I also think that sharing solutions to common problems and documenting them is long overdue. HTML is a sloppy, undisciplined language and it’s wrong that it should be interpreted and rendered when there are so many inappropriate and invalid versions of it out there.
We can’t go back and change this implementation, but what we can do is step up the standards and decide the final right practice in solving some of our most common markup dilemmas. Formalising the POSH process is a step in the right direction.
So go on, spread the word. POSH, yes… say it again, until you don’t feel foolish anymore and it’s just another buzzword in our lingo artillery.
Comments
- Cheryl says: April 26, 2007 @ 4:17 pm
Couldn’t they think of an acronym that didn’t sound like a spice girl?
- Lisa Herrod says: April 26, 2007 @ 8:05 pm
Argh I have a bit of an issue with this term. I totally understand your point, but having seen the term POSH emerge over the past couple of weeks I think it’s a bit over the top. Are we getting to a point where people need to start renaming existing practices in order to claim a ‘cool’ place in web history.
In the end we’re just talking about well formed, valid, semantic mark-up aren’t we? Sure POSH rolls off the tongue a lot easier, but doesn’t it trivialise it a bit?
- Standardzilla says: April 26, 2007 @ 8:21 pm
@Lisa - I agree with you on that one Lisa, it sucks in that regard and I really wish that people would actually care about what we do, and more importantly why we do.
One thing I have found in my ongoing corporate battle for accessibility though is exactly on these lines. Talk about accessibility and people don’t really care or let you do things that will improve the accessibility of the website.
Now change the angle of attack here and talk Search Engine Optimisation and they will let you do anything, even though it’s exactly the same accessibility agenda you were trying to push before.
‘Selling out’ is a term that people may try to push here, but I actually think it’s the geeks that are waking up to a bit of the realities of big businesses.
It’s time for standards to really hit the mainstream and for this I think we will feel some of the mainstream side effects.
@Cheryl - apparently ‘SCARY’ was taken.
- Dean Landolt » Blog Archive » POSH MF’ers… says: April 28, 2007 @ 8:33 am
[...] just learned of the push for POSH over at Standardzilla — short for Plain Old Semantic HTML. Why the hell do we need another idiomatic acronym [...]
- Ben Buchanan says: May 1, 2007 @ 3:19 pm
I guess SMCWYI (Stop Making Crap Websites, You Idiots) doesn’t really roll off the tongue so well ;)
I do wonder if the association with microformats might confuse some people - after all, it’s not a microformat it’s a methodology/quality thing.
But as you say, whatever works. If we can get the kids to eat their veges developers to create semantic HTML using a spoonfull of buzzword, then so be it! :)
- Ben Buchanan says: May 1, 2007 @ 3:21 pm
Hmm, apparently using DEL didn’t work in that comment. Should have gone with the old school “eat their veges^H^H^H^H” ;)
- kwijibo says: May 2, 2007 @ 9:54 pm
I concur with Lisa - it seems a little gimicky - an acronym for acronymity’s sake. We already had the term ’semantic HTML’ after all.
When I ‘coined’ Plain Old Semantic HTML, it was because I was looking for a term for “HTML as Data Format”; you know, writing your (x)HTML so that you can parse/transform it into some other data format. I think that’s a really handy thing to do sometimes, and a pretty useful concept, for which we don’t already have a generally-understood term. However, perhaps POSH wasn’t a great term for it - and it’s a pretty horrible acronym anyway.
My main reservation with the way POSH is being presented is, not only is it renaming an existing practice (with an existing name), but it’s making it seem more formal than it actually is - with a checklist, and a process, and buttons and branding.
If all of this does result in our markup skills being more marketable, as Standardzilla suggests, then fine, great, fantastic! I’m not totally confident that it will though.
- no posh says: May 4, 2007 @ 3:25 am
How about just “semantic HTML”? Sorry — I strongly dislike the word “POSH” whether in regular speech or as an acronym. I wish they would remove “POSH” from the microformats wiki. We don’t need more “cute” acronyms. It’s a great idea, but let’s keep “semantic HTML” and “semantic markup”.
- Plain Old Semantic HTML says: May 30, 2007 @ 9:00 am
But POSH makes GREAT Link Bait!
