Some thoughts on HTML
(Being a few observations on HTML and its usage based on my recent revisiting of that.)
Herein I'm taking a brief look at "new" html available today vs. old html from 30 years ago. It's certainly different, but is it better?
Yes, and no. (Well what sort of answer did you expect from an engineer?)
The new version has more features and functions such as style sheets and the ability to include scripts. The question is: does that help?
In some cases it certainly does. For example if you want to code lots of pages and have them all "look and feel" alike, setting up one style sheet for the lot is a time saver. Doing it for one or two pages on the other hand is a nuisance. That's why so many sites offer pre-made CSS for your convenience. Otherwise simply using the 'style' tag and its dependants is all you need.
Likewise scripting is a useful option for some. Being able to interact with your 'audience', whether through 'thumbs up/down' or comments or a 'guestbook' can be beneficial. Some sites don't offer this, others make it mandatory. Having it as your choice is ideal, providing you have knowledge of the potential risks ("Your site is lousy and you should die!") and enough self-control to not simply dive in head first. (Setting the design limits of your site is one of the most difficult things to decide upon: it is too easy to go 'overboard' and put in everything possible to the point where it's all a mess.)
Some word processors, such as Gawd-awful Docs, have the ability to output content as html. I tried this and had a peek at the results; it was terrible. An absolute over-blown mess of coding that would have taken hours of editing to trim down to what was actually necessary. I'm sure other programs do a better job of it. (I miss Navipress.)
Which brings us to Voyager I. That little space probe had 2 kilobytes of memory. Through careful efficient programming it was able to sail through the galaxy and send back tons of data that gave us new insight to the space around us. Today's personal computing devices have gigabytes of memory and terabytes of storage - and don't do anything an old Apple II couldn't do when you come right down to it. They may do it fancier, but not better. It seems the more resources available the more the code gets bloated to use it up.
Thus it was inevitable that html would go the same way: bigger, but not necessarily better. Merely sticking "nouveau et amélioré" on the outside of the box doesn't change the product on the inside.
Again, it's a matter of offering the right amount of complexity, not simply adding in everything possible simply because you can.