Preface

From Wikipedia|>, the free encyclopedia

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)|>HTML is the standard markup language|> for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser|>. It defines the content and structure of web content|>. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)|>CSS and scripting languages|> such as JavaScript|>.

Web browsers receive HTML documents from a web server|> or from local storage and render|>Browser engine the documents into multimedia|> web pages|>. HTML describes the structure of a web page semantically|>Semantic Web and originally included cues for its appearance.

HTML elements are the building blocks of HTML pages.

Widespread input/output devices are mobile devices|> such as smartphones|>, tablet computers|> and laptops|>, or less portable as smart TVs|> or desktop computers|>.

Recent web browsers support accessible|>Accessibility hypertext|> and numerous JavaScript|> Web APIs|m>Web/API to e.g. camera|>digital camera, audio|>Digital audio, clipboard|>clipboard (computing), GPS|>, sensors|> etc.

Nevertheless, simple well-formed HTML documents are rarely rendered to be ergonomic by default:

1. Touchable or even clickable areas are displayed too small.
2. User preferred color-scheme|m>Web/CSS/color-scheme ignored (dark mode|>).
3. Missing "table of contents" navigation, derived from the structuring HTML Section Heading elements|m>Web/HTML/Element/Heading_Elements.
4. Missing a horizontal counterpart of the vertically scrolling view, horizontal text lines get too long to be read nicely.

Images|m>Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/img with image maps|m>Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/map might be used to include diagrams|> and graphs|>graph (abstract data type). Also, user input elements|m>Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/input are quite limited.

So there is good reason for the many web frameworks and authoring tools. Is there a good light-weight choice for creating just a little hypertext and small programs?

A cautious wish list

1. Easy integration into editing environments / small toolchain|>
2. Adjustment of touch-target sizes
3. Split long HTML documents into separate scrollable "panels"
4. Automatic elements
   • Document title / top heading h1: use meta data
   • Top menu: navigation, orientation, theme and fullscreen
   • Navigation: table of contents
   • Lazy reference links to common sources like Wikipedia|> or MDN|>MDN Web Docs
   • HTML/CSS validators (even to generated content)
5. Small programs need
   • a little console
   • simple source code documentation tool
   • enhanced input elements
6. Good print style
7. A multi-column view mode with horizontal snap to column and fast page scroll steps (number of visible columns minus one)

Decision: browser vanilla|>vanilla software

The basic materials are DOM|>Document Object Model, CSS|>Cascading Style Sheets and JavaScript|>, as delivered by the most common browsers|>Webbrowser: the scratch to build from.

See: Tags|m>Web/HTML/Element, events|m>Web/API/EventTarget/addEventListener, identifiers|h>named-access-on-the-window-object, loading|h>delay-the-load-event, hashChange|h>the-hashchangeevent-interface

Status

2026

1. [✓] Easy integration into editing environments / small toolchain|>
2. [✓] Adjustment of touch-target sizes
3. [✓] Split long HTML documents into separate scrollable "panels"
4. Automatic elements
   • [✓] Document title / top heading h1: use meta data
   • [✓] Top menu: navigation, orientation, theme and fullscreen
   • [✓] Navigation: table of contents
   • [✓] Lazy reference links to common sources like Wikipedia|> or MDN|>MDN Web Docs
   • [--] HTML/CSS validators (even to generated content)
5. Small programs need
   • [✓] a little console
   • [✓] simple source code documentation tool
   • [--] enhanced input elements
6. [☡] Good print style
7. [☡] A multi-column view mode with horizontal snap to column and fast page scroll steps (number of visible columns minus one)