W3C’s “Deprecated” Is Now Deprecated and “Obsolete” Will Be Used As Deprecated.
HTML/XHTML continue to evolve. W3C’s recommend use for previously used elements is always evolving. Their documentation must also in order to convey their message. Let it be known that elements that were no longer going to be used in HTML, deemed “Deprecated” from the standards, will be known as “Obsolete” going forward. The word “deprecated” has been deprecated and replaced by “obsolete”. It’s slightly comical because when I’ve been asked what “deprecated” means I say “it means now ‘obsolete'”. I think this is exactly what I was told when I asked what it meant.
dep·re·cate
ˈdeprəˌkāt/
verb
past tense: deprecated; past participle: deprecated
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1.
express disapproval of.
“he sniffed in a deprecating way”
synonyms: deplore, abhor, disapprove of, frown on, take a dim view of, take exception to, detest, despise; More “the school deprecates this behavior”
antonyms: praise, overrate -
(chiefly of a software feature) be usable but regarded as obsolete and best avoided, typically due to having been superseded.
“this feature is deprecated and will be removed in later versions”
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2.
another term for depreciate (sense 2).
“he deprecates the value of children’s television”
Thankfully there is a good reason for this. They wanted to separate these elements into two categories: “conforming” obsolete features and “non-conforming” obsolete features. Conforming features will provide warnings in the validator, but will still be supported by browsers. You can used them, but it’s considered bad practice and something that should be avoided.
Non-conforming features, are considered fully obsolete and should not be used. They will produce errors in the validator and will probably not be rendered or supported in browsers.
The W3C has a description of these obsolete features, with examples.