My book is all about the “why” of web standards (and especially the why of semantic markup) and it’s still selling and still being translated into new languages. That’s one way the arguments in favor of web standards are being disseminated to people who either haven’t heard yet or have heard but haven’t yet been persuaded. Google “why+web+standards” and you’ll find other other places the case is being made.

My point isn’t that the argument is over; my point is that it needs to be made—and an acronym is not an argument.

I’m with John on this one, the Tables vs CSS argument is not over, in fact I believe we have just scratched the surface. yes we have convinced the conference going fringe. That was the easy part. Now the hard work has to be done, we need to convince the web designers that don’t read blogs, that may only pick up a book or magazine every now and again. This is a majority, the mainstream. We have to find a tool, a marketing tool to reach them This is where POSH comes in. I might not like POSH as a term. But I do take my hat off for the effort and I understand what its trying to achieve.

I don’t think that quite captures the idea behind POSH.

As microformats have become more popular, the term has commonly come to be used for any use of class values with HTML, whereas, a microformat is the product of a process. I think it was Chris Messina who observed that the term “semantic HTMl” had been round for quite some time, and yet had still not gained significant traction beyond a relatively small hard core of developers (what Joe Clark would refer to as “standardistas”).

Despite what people may think of the term “web 2.0″ there is no doubt that it has served well as a brand name for a new generation of web applications and approaches. POSH is a brand name for “semantic HTML”, a little bit fun, yet still meaningfully associated with those underlying concepts. Will it fly in the marketplace of ideas? Who knows – that’s the beauty of that marketplace.

But why does semantic html need a brand name? Despite what we might think and hope, outside this pretty small percentage of developers, the ideas of separating presentation from content, let alone adding richer semantics to our content are still far from widely adopted. Only a couple of days ago I had a conversation with a senior developer at a communications agency that has offices in several countries, and huge multinational companies who wanted to argue all those things about CSS not being as easy as tables and so on that many of us probably think are done and dusted arguments. They really aren’t, hard as it may be to believe.

So its not simply about microformats, in fact, I think most of those closely associated with microformats would probably agree that POSH (the concept, not the term) is at least as important as microformats, and indeed, without a proper understanding of how to use structured, semantic HTML, microformats really aren’t very useful to developers.

I think we are entering a new phase of our “crusade ;-)” to encourage developers everywhere to adopt what we take for granted as best practices. In “Crossing the Chasm” terminology, the early adopters are on board, it’s now the early mainstream who are addressing these issues. what it takes to convince them will be quite different to what has come before. It’s about practical benefits, over theoretical possibilities. And it’s about simple clear messages, and frankly a term like semantic HTML, that we have all got very used to is pretty spikey – what the hell is semantics anyway? ;-)

So, anyone out there is free to ignore the term POSH, or come up with one of their own ;-)

j

is it just another way to encourage people to use semantic tags and class-names?

It came out of the microformats community, where some people who didn’t quite get it were adding all kinds of junk to their markup in order to create new, not necessarily needed, microformats. The originators of microformats wanted to remind people that appropriate structural elements (with class names when necessary) made better servants than a string of nonsemantic spans and divs with class names out the wazoo. They believed that by creating a new acronym for Plain Old Semantic HTML, and making a wiki page on the subject, they would help would-be microformats makers understand and respect the basics of standards-based development.

Even though I’ve read about ‘Posh’ I still don’t fully understand why it’s needed – is it just another way to encourage people to use semantic tags and class-names?

I guess it just depends on who you are dealing with, Semantic markup may not be so self-explanatory. Many of the newer published books make a great distinction, but there are still others – relying on WYSIWYG support, that don’t understand some of the tiny nuances (deprecated tags/attributes and such).

So – I think anything that encourages more education is great – but you are correct, it is another acronym to mask semantic markup at the core.

Regardless of all of that – I just appreciate those who are making active participation to educate people on proper practices – including yourself.

I think we need another acronym related to dropping your WYSIWYG and learning your trade. That would just make things easiest :)

“Semantic markup” is a clear, self-explanatory phrase. POSH is an blind acronym talking to itself.

To my comrades who are promoting “POSH” as a tool of persuasion, I say, if you want to encourage web developers to write minimal, semantic markup, explain the benefits of doing so and don’t fall in love with acronyms.

But that’s just me.

And I’m not as dischuffed about it as this gentleman.

@Josh
I look forward to the same interview. These two guys are doing such great work in the realm of markup, semantics, and building blocks such as Microformats and POSH. I think they should just join forces and write one big Bulletproof book :)