Something horribly wrong, written in (or using) HTML. Often makes stuff on the Web inaccessible, slow loading, unbookmarkable/irreproducible, aggravating,or just plain bugridden. Their synergism makes URLs and page sources incomprehensible and useless, but at least it reduces the risk of people actually communicating. Many HTML generators spew out this kind of thing. An HTML atrocity is usually a result of work by designers or programmers who are totally clueless. They don't know what HTML can and can't (and should and shouldn't) do, and they don't care for standards. They should be tried by a W3C tribunal. There are three major flavours:
- Bad HTML: gratuitous use of non-standard HTML tags (usually browser-specific); mostly-text regions rendered as graphics; anything dependent on the font, exact window size, etc.; and stuff generally opposed to the philosophy of HTML, such as the infamous blink tag.
- Not HTML: HTML hopelessly mixed in with JavaScript, Java applets, and plugin bits, to no particularly necessary effect; HTML generated dynamically, on demand, on the fly, through CGI, cookies, and whatnot, when static pages and a little planning would have done better.
- Lame HTML: HTML doing stuff it wasn't designed for (there's a lot of that), either because it was deliberately forced on a situation where it is inappropriate, or because the wrong approach was adopted. An attempt to create a "movie" in HTML is one example (see Netscape Fishcam).