Browsers deployed scroll bars because they "allowed any screen to show any document," Lie said. But, he argued, the scroll bar--an idea borrowed from desktop applications such as word processors and photo editors--places limitations on how content is rendered and viewed.

One problem is that the material being displayed rarely fits neatly into the browser window. The reader may see half-lines, or bits of an image, at the top or at the bottom of the page. "You never hit the line exactly," Lie said. The approach also limits how pages are designed, with many sites defaulting to a single column of text per page, rarely taking advantage of how a browser can move its view horizontally as well as vertically. Also, printing Web pages can be problematic, with the browser not having any instructions how to break up the Web page across multiple printed pages.

"The page can have a much more beautiful presentation," Lie said. "The flipping of the page becomes an event. I think few people would sit and read 'Alice in Wonderland' with a scroll bar."

The goal behind the specification is to provide a minimal set of markup to "turn any website into a paged experience," Lie said. It provides rule-sets to address formatting issues such as setting the number of columns per page, how to paginate a site and how to hyphenate text.

Using a tablet, Lie demonstrated how a Web page could be viewed with a browser that supported this markup. He presented a mockup of a newspaper, complete with multiple columns and full-page ads. The experience of moving through the paper closely resembled that of using the Amazon Kindle reader for tablets, or a stand-alone magazine app such as that from "The New Yorker."