Anyone who's done webdesign is aware of the basic formats of websites and the common design elements these formats can be broken down into. So why not save on the drudgery and standardize it?
Part of it, though not the most important part, would be a system of widgets that run on dynamic html. For instance, some people aren't happy with plain old <FORM> elements. They want their textboxes custom designed. They want it to be a <DIV> tag with their favorite background color, font and border style. They want it to use a javascript loop to display a blinking | or _ cursor within it and use the onKeyPress event to allow text input. Or they want context-dependant pop-up menues triggered by onRightClick or something snazzy like that. And such a language could provide a set of highly customizable dhtml widgets. But I have something more in mind.
A search directory like yahoo.com, a free Q&A service like allexperts.com, and an online encyclopedia all have one thing in common. They all contain a hyperlinked, heirarchically categorized list of every conceivable topic and field of knowledge. This generic list can therefore be thought of as redundant html code and it would be much easier if someone could just insert a tag into their HTML code like <GENERICLIST REFERENCE> and have the html engine itself generate this clickable list, each generic topic expandable when clicked on to other little subtopics like Science would expand into Astronomy, Physics and Archeology. And then you can add all these little HTML attributes to it in order to determine how many columns the list will display in, font size, background and border color, any particular topics you don't want present, (for instance, an online encyclopedia would have no use for a category called Entertainment) so you would type <GENERICLIST REFERENCE Entertainment=NO> or you could add new custom topics to the list and define your own heircahy. You can define weither you want each link to open a new page or to use a dynamic html script to show a drop-down menu of subcategories to click on. The reason I treated REFERENCE as an attribute of <GENERICLIST> is because there are other types of generic lists we often encounter. For instance, <GENERICLIST MENUBAR ALIGN=LEFT> where a single column or single row menu bar aligned on the left or top of the screen respectively provides a list of dropdown selections for navigating the website.
That's just one example. You could build an entire development language based on the redundancies of web design. There's <GENERICFORM REGISTER> where a form would automatically be generated asking for a username and password and various contact information. Or <GENERICFORM SIGNIN REMEMBERLOGINCHECKBOX=YES> to automatically generate a sign-in section for users complete with username field, password field, and displays a checkbox if they want the site to remember their login from now on. These would be customizable objects with adjustable attributes.
There's also <GOOGLESEARCHBAR ADVANCEDSEARCH=YES> to include on your website a search bar from google that allows for advanced searching.
I'm sure there are a million other ideas. Website design is pretty much standardized by now and I think it allows for a much more specialized development language.-- Anarch, Apr 29 2004 This pretty much already exists with XML and scripting. Higher-level functionality is obtained through functions, classes, inheritance, and a whole host of other well-known options.
The real difficult part is getting different interests groups to *agree* on a standardized nomenclature. You are free to invent your own higher-level definitions, but good luck getting anyone else out there to recognize them.-- drefty, Jan 24 2006 random, halfbakery