Another thought on abbr: is it proper to do something like <abbr title='HTML'>HyperText Markup Language<abbr>? If so, when should it be used rather than the more normal way of putting the long form in the title?

The spec says

ACRONYM:

Indicates an acronym (e.g., WAC, radar, etc.).

which doesn't in my mind forbid it, and

The content of the ABBR and ACRONYM elements specifies the abbreviated expression itself, as it would normally appear in running text. The title attribute of these elements may be used to provide the full or expanded form of the expression.

which seems to contradict itself.

Take, for example, something like

As a result, Penn State's Information Technology Services (ITS) is urging that the University computing community use standards-based Web browsers other than Internet Explorer…

Now, the part that would "normally appear in running text" is Penn State's Information Technology Services. It's only after this that the acronym is introduced, and it's parenthetical—one could almost say that it's not part of the content at all. But it makes no sense here to put the expanded form in the title, since it's already written out.

Blah, I don't want to finish writing this. I'll just say that I think it's perfectly acceptable to do things this way, and ideally XHMTL 2 will introduce two new attributes to distinguish between the two, and title can be left for when it shouldn't be written out at all, but you want to still let people know what it means, like on Anne's site .