HTML - the lost elements: abbr, acronym, dfn, code, samp, kbd, var

There are a lot of elements, which are hardly ever used, although useful for layouting and presentation on different devices and platforms without complex javascripts (such as modernizr).

For a complete list see here:

The following codes are phrase elements:

<abbr>...</abbr>

Marks an abbreviation, and can make the full form available:

<abbr title="abbreviation">abbr.</abbr>

Standardized in HTML 4.0; still current.

<acronym>...</acronym>

Similar to the abbr element, but marks an acronym:

<acronym title="Hyper-Text Markup Language">HTML</acronym>

Standardized in HTML 4.0; still current.

<dfn>...</dfn>

Inline definition of a single term.

DFN existed in HTML Internet Draft 1.2, and was fully standardized in HTML 3.2; still current.

<em>...</em>

Emphasis (conventionally displayed in italics)

EM existed in HTML Internet Draft 1.2, and was standardized in HTML 2.0; still current.

<strong>...</strong>

strong emphasis (conventionally displayed bold).

An aural user agent may use different voices for emphasis.

STRONG existed in HTML Internet Draft 1.2, and was standardized in HTML 2.0; still current.

as well as computer phrase elements, useful for developers:

<code>...</code>

A code snippet. Conventionally rendered in a monospace font: Code snippet.

CODE existed in HTML Internet Draft 1.2, and was standardized in HTML 2.0; still current.

<samp>...</samp>

Sample output (from a program or script)

SAMP existed in HTML Internet Draft 1.2, and was standardized in HTML 2.0; still current.

<kbd>...</kbd>

Keyboard - text to be entered by the user

KBD existed in HTML Internet Draft 1.2, and was standardized in HTML 2.0; still current.

<var>...</var>

Variable

VAR existed in HTML Internet Draft 1.2, and was standardized in HTML 2.0; still current.

It is thinkable that in due time syntax highlighting is provided by the browser, instead of javascripts like Syntaxhighlighter. I've recently tinkered with automatic inferring the language based on the most frequent keywords within the first few lines, which is scored by a grammar rule. i.e. adjacency of certain keywords to each other extracted from empirical codes.

This works very well without any serious computing overhead.