3 ms·

The `<blink>` tag was an official part of early HTML standard, until teenagers showed up online and sanity prevailed. I suspect this could have been there to ma

by bertil 1y ago

The `<blink>` tag was an official part of early HTML standard, until teenagers showed up online and sanity prevailed. I suspect this could have been there to maintain compatibility with older webpages.

fredoralive 1y ago
This blink is in a specific UI XML dialect, not HTML.
- ninjaoxygen 1y ago
  True, it has never been in an HTML standard, however it was definitely a documented part of early HTML. The blink element was in Netscape Navigator's HTML dialect in 1993/94, when early HTML was still just hitting IETF RFCs / DRAFTs, you can find blink in the Netscape HTML developer documentation from just after that era, DevEdge. It was never in NCSA Mosaic, the other big GUI browser of the era. Later on in the process of being standardized, when it was more W3C than IETF albeit still mainly the same people, Netscape agreed to drop blink from the proposals if Microsoft dropped marquee, so in that sense yes, it was never in a standardized version of HTML, but many tags in active use at the time were never in a standards doc. See here https://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/book4/ch02.html https://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/book4/ch02.html for some history from w3c, who went on to become the formal custodians of HTML after the IETF days. Edit: here's the earliest Netscape Developer Docs I can see on archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/19961115043739/http://developer.netscape.com/library/documentation/htmlguid/tags1.htm#1005356 https://web.archive.org/web/19961115043739/http://developer....
  - account42 1y ago
    Blink shows that the webs often touted absolute backwards compatibility can be broken for really petty reasons. At least these days you can easily bring back the fun: blink { animation: blink 1s steps(5, start) infinite; } @keyframes blink { to { visibility: hidden } }
ROllerozxa 1y ago
Yeah that's where the concept of the blink tag originates, the now deprecated HTML tag. But what's covered in the blog post refers specifically to a hidden (and AFAIK undocumented) blink tag that exists in the Android XML layout view system, which is an independent thing from the system WebView browser (that I assume probably still contains some code for blink tags, but that wouldn't be a surprising discovery). I don't know if there are any other built-in tags in Android views that really map to HTML tags otherwise.
tuveson 1y ago
It actually seems like there’s another Easter egg if you google “blink tag”: https://www.google.com/search?q=blink+tag https://www.google.com/search?q=blink+tag (Doesn’t seem to trigger on iOS, but works in Chrome and Firefox on desktop)
- account42 1y ago
  Disappointing, the result HTML doesn't actually use <blink> tags.

by bertil 1y ago

fredoralive 1y ago

This blink is in a specific UI XML dialect, not HTML.

ninjaoxygen 1y ago
True, it has never been in an HTML standard, however it was definitely a documented part of early HTML. The blink element was in Netscape Navigator's HTML dialect in 1993/94, when early HTML was still just hitting IETF RFCs / DRAFTs, you can find blink in the Netscape HTML developer documentation from just after that era, DevEdge. It was never in NCSA Mosaic, the other big GUI browser of the era. Later on in the process of being standardized, when it was more W3C than IETF albeit still mainly the same people, Netscape agreed to drop blink from the proposals if Microsoft dropped marquee, so in that sense yes, it was never in a standardized version of HTML, but many tags in active use at the time were never in a standards doc. See here https://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/book4/ch02.html https://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/book4/ch02.html for some history from w3c, who went on to become the formal custodians of HTML after the IETF days. Edit: here's the earliest Netscape Developer Docs I can see on archive.org https://web.archive.org/web/19961115043739/http://developer.netscape.com/library/documentation/htmlguid/tags1.htm#1005356 https://web.archive.org/web/19961115043739/http://developer....
- account42 1y ago
  Blink shows that the webs often touted absolute backwards compatibility can be broken for really petty reasons. At least these days you can easily bring back the fun: blink { animation: blink 1s steps(5, start) infinite; } @keyframes blink { to { visibility: hidden } }

ROllerozxa 1y ago

Yeah that's where the concept of the blink tag originates, the now deprecated HTML tag. But what's covered in the blog post refers specifically to a hidden (and AFAIK undocumented) blink tag that exists in the Android XML layout view system, which is an independent thing from the system WebView browser (that I assume probably still contains some code for blink tags, but that wouldn't be a surprising discovery). I don't know if there are any other built-in tags in Android views that really map to HTML tags otherwise.

tuveson 1y ago

It actually seems like there’s another Easter egg if you google “blink tag”: https://www.google.com/search?q=blink+tag https://www.google.com/search?q=blink+tag (Doesn’t seem to trigger on iOS, but works in Chrome and Firefox on desktop)

account42 1y ago
Disappointing, the result HTML doesn't actually use <blink> tags.