Attributes Dropped From HTML 5
There are a number of attributes that HTML 5 drops from the standard. This is not a complete list of all the attributes dropped from every single tag but rather is a list of those that are applicable to a number of different tags or which have a particular significance.
- rev which identifies the reverse relationship to rel has been dropped. Apparently relationships in HTML 5 only go one way.
- align and other attributes relating to aligning content within an element have been dropped. Presumably it is intended that this now always be set in the CSS. While there are some HTML variants for alignment that have no current CSS equivalents those HTML variants are not supported by current browsers and so it makes perfect sense that the functionality if it is added be done through CSS.
- longdesc is no longer allowed on images. Presumably someone decided that because it is not well supported that it isn't required however I suspect that its support amongst those types of browsers that it is intended for (such as web readers) is actually much higher than generally. Doing away with this attribute makes HTML 5 web pages far less accessible than before.
- alt on input fields with a type="image" is no longer supported. Presumably those who can't see the images are no longer required to be able to use forms that use an image to submit the form since this does away with their ability to identify how to submit the form.
- border for table elements which ought to be specified using CSS rather than HTML now must be specified via CSS. Similarly cellpadding and cellspacing must now also be specified via CSS rather than being able to be specified in the HTML. Presumably it is assumed that the browser defaults are sufficient to allow a table to be usable when CSS is disabled or unavailable.
- scope has also been dropped from the td element and now only applies to th elements. This helps to enforce that column and row headings in tables be properly identified as such.
While some of these removals make sense tere is no really compelling reason as to why those options specifically need to be removed particularly since those being removed due to lack of browser support do not have any alternative method that browsers do support to apply the equivalent. I suppose thereason for removing those is to ensure that a solution when browser do make one available is done in the more appropriate way. The removal of some of the others is just plain stupid and just demonstrates that those who have made the decision do not understand properly what the purpose of those attributes is.
