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101 Comments
- cwmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -11/+122The simple fact is that the web ***** sucks. HTML, CSS, yada yada, it's all poorly thought out garbage hobbled together and misinterpreted by a myriad of browsers. XHTML tries to take it closer to XML and the goal of that is to try to make the interweb readable not just by humans, but by machines. In other words the internet should be a collection of data that can be processed by any means you wish to.
The arguments for HTML: It's easy and supported.
The arguments for XHTML: It's a step closer to what the Internet should be.
Anyway, back to browsing porn at work. - UGM2099, on 10/12/2007, -6/+52If this is true then what reasons do authorities such as A List Apart, Happy Cog, Simple Bits, Andy Rutledge, and so on use XHTML? I've become a much better web designer by following the greats. If a site like Dictionary.com uses XHTML how could it be truly be unsatisfactory?
- fkr3, on 10/12/2007, -17/+55I don't believe html of any flavour matters in the long run. The W3 let html, css and javascript stagnate - the current standards are all approaching their 10th birthdays.
Every year there's an attempt to kick off a "fresh" html, like the unofficial and unsupported "html 5" ( http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/ ) but I think at some point we have to just accept, html/css/javascript are outdated and unable to keep up with the directions the web is moving in.
That's why so many "web 2.0" startups fall into a very small range of categories - bookmarking, rss, personalised homepages etc. Nobody's doing anything new or cutting edge with these comatose technologies.
Meanwhile proprietry technologies are pushing boundaries every day. Flash has been developed heavily for 10 years now. Adobe's Apollo is going to make the line between web and desktop applications non-existant, and Microsoft's XAML is doing the same thing in a different way. Even Java and ActiveX have offered much, much more than html/javascript/css.
Various non-proprietry attempts have been made to corner this inevitable shift in technologies, like XUL and SVG but XUL requires Firefox which most users don't have and SVG never took off.
Either Adobe or Microsoft is going to dominate the internet over the next year or two. The irony of that is it's the complete opposite of the purpose of the W3's standards, and a result of their complete and utter failure to progress as the internet did. - pingring, on 10/12/2007, -4/+37You guys are missing the point.
Browsers don't render content based on the tags of the markup. The browsers create an internal document representation of the markup, and render content based on that internal object model. XHTML, with it's XML backbone, allows some browsers (Mozilla, Opera, KHTML, Safari?) to switch to a pure XML parser to load the markup. The parsing of the page is much, much faster in this case, and is noticable even on modern equipment.
HTML4.01 can still use CSS, and whatever "web2.0" tricks XHTML brings to the table. However, if you're going to go that far, why not add the proper doctype and close all your tags? Same structural markup, entirely valid, and some browsers benefit from the added speed. Two lines of server-side code to serve the proper mimetype, specify XHTML version 1.0, and you're good to go.
The real blend between human and computer readable is XML with an XSLT stylesheet, coupled with CSS and JavaScript. Natively supported in all the major browsers (back to IE5.5), and often times you can generate the dynamic content of your page by dumping an object model into an object-to-XML generator doohickey. The XSLT will remain cached on the client-side, providing huge speed boosts between page loads, as well as severely reduced bandwidth bills.
However, do the XHTML movement a favor, and stop using transitional. CSS really isn't very hard ... - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -15/+36XHTML 1.0 Transitional for me until otherwise.
I just hope this doesn't become another pointless TAbLEs Vs DiV debate, dinosaurs vs new breed. - sonofagunn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+21I switched my site from HTML 4.01 to XHTML 1.0 by switching the doctype declaration and closing some br and img tags. There was a radio button attribute change from CHECKED to checked="true".
That was it. It's not a big deal at all. My HTML 4.01 already had the content seperated from the presentation so the change was completely trivial. I did it just because I use XML a lot and I like my tags (like the br tag) to always be closed.
I don't see the "danger" in using XHTML 1.0 and serving it as text/html. It's what I do, it's valid according to the w3c, and it works in every browser. - Homunculiheaded, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19fkr3, while I'm not 100% sold on xhtml you can't deny the benefits if it was universally adopted. "Using an xml parser on an html document!?" you do understand that value of this right? The essence of the web is interoperability and being able to easily parse and extract data from a website leads to a very, very wide range of possibilities. The tools you can make if a website is machine-readable are very useful and if you've every written a screen-scraper you know what a pain it can be to try to parse data from standard html.
There is so much data out there that nothing can be done with because its simply too much for human readers to actually process, good semantic markup will open a lot of interesting doors. - axel2k1, on 10/12/2007, -6/+22I like XHTML and its idea of the separation of content and layout. Using simple CSS and XHTML to layout a site saves a lot of headaches when you need to make minor (or even major) modifications to a site.
Anyone who is still touting the "benefits" of using things like the font tag probably doesn't have much experience with CSS. - Clearz, on 10/12/2007, -4/+19"I find it much easier to debug HTML as I have been doing it for years and years."
If your still at the stage where you have to "Debug HTML" after years of experience I think its time to look at a new career. I never even knew HTML could contain bugs in the traditional sense. - l0ne, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14XHTML has an advantage HTML does not have: I can parse it with XML tools, so I can make, for example, well-formed XML templates that get parsed and expanded by tools I write.
That's cool. :) - ElectricSoup, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14Here's the W3C table "summariz[ing] recommendation[s] to content authors for labeling XHTML documents":
http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-media-types/#summary
In short, you MAY serve XHTML 1.0 as text/html so long as it is "HTML compatible".
The author of the linked piece tries to imply otherwise, without actually misstating the position. He also quotes Harry This and Tommy That and Johnny Theother saying you oughtn't to.
All that is an irrelevance, because the W3C says you may. To be sure, there's no particular advantage to using XHTML - unless you need to embed MathML. But there's no particular disadvantage either, and the W3C specifically says you may. A normal person would conclude "either will do" and wonder why this issue matters quite so much to the author. Hasn't he anything better to do - like cleaning his shoes or making his dinner or whatever ...? - flowctrl, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12This article is ridiculous. The premise is that the doctype declaration in XHTML documents "should be" application/html+xml and "should be" parsed as XML, but most sites use "text/html" instead. Using text/html means, according to this article, that browsers treat it as HTML 4.0, so you should just do your site in HTML 4.0 and ignore XHTML until all browsers parse XML documents properly and HTML is part of the ancient past, which it will never be.
The premise is wrong. XHTML 1.0 Transitional is specifically designed as a *transition* from HTML to a more structured and consistent mark up. The transition is away from the fast-and-loose HTML 4.x and towards a future based on XML. The W3C addresses the reasons why this is a good thing in their FAQ:
http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/xhtml-faq - weeeezzll, on 10/12/2007, -9/+18fkr3: What a total piece of tripe. Pure FUD....nothing more...I can believe there were actually 5 people stupid enough to digg your comment...
fkr3 said:
"but I think at some point we have to just accept, html/css/javascript are outdated and unable to keep up with the directions the web is moving in."
Are you kidding? HTML is the only one that is outdated and it was the first markup language on the "Internet" and is now coming up on 20 years. Javascript is hardly outdated. It has become the standard for client side scripting. The only real bad about any of those technologies are the piss poor implementations of them. CSS was waaaaaaaaaaaay ahead of it's time when it came out, and is hardly outdated. It wasn't until about 2 years ago that people really started using it for anything other than simple markup. Most of the is good about the internet that has arrived in the last two years is due to XML, CSS and Javascript.
fkr3 said:
"That's why so many "web 2.0" startups fall into a very small range of categories - bookmarking, rss, personalised homepages etc. Nobody's doing anything new or cutting edge with these comatose technologies."
Web 2.0 has nothing to do with these technologies or any other technologies for that matter. Web 2.0 is a term coined by O'Reilly Media to describe the fundamental shift in how the web was being used the shift from information silos to content providers.
fkr3 said:
"Meanwhile proprietry technologies are pushing boundaries every day. Flash has been developed heavily for 10 years now. Adobe's Apollo is going to make the line between web and desktop applications non-existant, and Microsoft's XAML is doing the same thing in a different way. Even Java and ActiveX have offered much, much more than html/javascript/css."
Flash is crap, it has hardly changed since version 5 from the user perspective but is now at what major version? I believe it's eight...yup...three major version numbers with absolutely nothing to show for except for broken backwards compatibility. XAML is crap. Microsoft basically took SVG and tried to spice it up a bit, and as usual ***** it up...
Java hasn't offered the web a damn thing other than some trivial early day applets. Java has made huge inroads in the corporate world though, and is the platform independant language of choice for most companies. ActiveX is a ***** joke. It has offered nothing but security vulnerabilities to the world. - ctbfourone, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9Can't read the article because the site is dugg, but I can't think of any smart person who would recommend this unless you're catering to a majority IE6 audience. If that's the case, then at least switch to XHTML Transitional + CSS.
Better to straddle the fence than be stuck on the wrong side. - Nanobe, on 10/12/2007, -5/+11While the site is down, here's a list of related articles. Several of them are from prominent web standards experts, members of the W3C, and browser developers.
http://blog.dorward.me.uk/2006/10/28/html-and-html.html - HTML is dead, long live HTML
http://www.wlmark.com/xhtml-html.php - html vs xhtml
http://www.spartanicus.utvinternet.ie/no-xhtml.htm - No to XHTML
http://annevankesteren.nl/2004/08/xhtml - Quick guide to XHTML
http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml - Sending XHTML as text/html Considered Harmful
http://turnipspatch.com/articles/that-little-xhtml-or-html-debate - That little "XHTML or HTML?" debate
http://fadtastic.net/2006/11/02/the-invisible-design-decision/ - The Invisible Design Decision
http://webkit.org/blog/?p=68 - Understanding HTML, XML and XHTML (official Safari blog)
http://www.elementary-group-standards.com/html/why-do-you-use-html-4.html - Why do You use HTML 4?
http://akaxaka.gameover.com/index.php/2006/why-i-use-html-instead-of-xhtml/ - Why I use HTML (instead of xHTML)
http://www.benjaminhawkeslewis.com/www/web-design/why-not-xhtml - Why Not XHTML 1.0?
http://www.elementary-group-standards.com/archives/site-standards/why-xhtml.html - Why XHTML?
http://lachy.id.au/log/2005/12/xhtml-beginners - XHTML is not for Beginners
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=393445 - XHTML vs HTML FAQ
And here are some quick quotes from the major browser developers:
Microsoft (Internet Explorer): "If we tried to support real XHTML in IE 7 we would have ended up using our existing HTML parser (which is focused on compatibility) and hacking in XML constructs. It is highly unlikely we could support XHTML well in this way" ( http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/15/467901.aspx )
Mozilla (Firefox): "If you are using the usual HTML features [...] serving valid HTML 4.01 as text/html ensures the widest browser and search engine support." ( http://www.mozilla.org/docs/web-developer/faq.html#accept )
Apple (Safari): "On today's web, the best thing to do is to make your document HTML4 all the way. Full XHTML processing is not an option, so the best choice is to stick consistently with HTML4." ( http://webkit.org/blog/?p=68 )
Hakon Wium Lie (from Opera, W3C): "I don't think XHTML is a realistic option for the masses. HTML5 is it." ( http://www.heise.de/ct/Redaktion/heb/w3c/lie_english.html )
Anne van Kesteren (from Opera): "I'm an advocate of using XHTML only in the correct way, which basically means you have to use HTML. Period." ( http://annevankesteren.nl/2004/08/xhtml )
Ian Hickson (from Opera, Google, W3C): "Authors intending their work for public consumption should stick to HTML 4.01" ( http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml ) - thadman08, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7html != tables
xhtml != divs
A lot of people commenting on this article seem to think that css positioning and layout only works with xhtml. All of great content/layout separation dogma works perfectly well with xhtml AND html. CSS files are not exclusive to xhtml.
The premise of the article is that using xhtml is currently broken (poor browser support) and for the time serving files as html is probably the more correct thing to do. - thatbox, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8fkr3, the whole point of XHTML is exactly that, to share in the benefits of XML!
- kingofthegreens, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9@fkr3: Your missing the point geodescent was trying to make. The concept here is that separating the page structure from its presentation is what XHTML is all about. While you still use CSS for both HTML and XHTML standards; XTHML tries to create this seperation by not supporting inline CSS (even though it still works in most cases) as HTML allows it.
So if you want to do something proper take your time and use XHTML seperating your presentation and structure layers, otherwise just hack up some HTML for something quick and dirty
:-) - gsnedders, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Huh? How is XHTML any better? XHTML 1.0 Strict allows just as many presentational elements as HTML 4.01 Strict.
- Nanobe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5pingring: Download speed is usually the bottleneck in document parsing. On the Internet, there is generally no noticeable difference in the document load time between HTML and XHTML on modern computers. Furthermore, XML doesn't reduce that much parsing logic relative to the *typical* level of HTML support offered by modern browsers. It reduces some, but not that much. That said, most browsers don't really support much of the HTML standard as far as the SGML rules it's supposed to inherit. My article covers this.
axel2k1: Read the article. XHTML has nothing to do with separation of content and presentation. That concept fully exists in HTML as well. - angusm, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I author in XML, and use XSLT stylesheets to transform to XHTML (or HTML 4.0.1), the whole process automated by 'ant'. It's a bit pedantic, but I prefer to do my website development using a "you asked for it, you got it" approach rather than What-You-See-Is-(Nearly)-What-You-Get tools.
Using an XML-based language as a basis (and that could be XHTML) also has the bonus that it's trivial to write scripts to walk through your documents and spit out indexes, tables of contents, sitemaps and so on. Using XSLT means that you can also produce multiple output documents - for example, to target a .mobi site as well as your main site - from a single set of base documents. - Nanobe, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Judging from the comments, it seems a lot of people have commented without even reading the article. Please actually read it through and look at the examples.
If you thinking using XHTML is fine because "it works in every browser" then you're wrong, as you'd know if you read the article. Take a look at the list of sites that break when treated as proper XHTML. Those people thought it worked fine in every browser, until something actually tried to treat it how XHTML was *meant* to be treated, rather than as HTML like most browsers will currently treat it.
Also, it's a false perception that XHTML is somehow "the future". It isn't, plain and simple. XHTML 1.x is completely incompatible with XHTML 2. Completely incompatible. If you want to use XHTML 2, you'll have to rewrite your site from scratch whether you're using HTML or XHTML. Even then, the W3C is putting their focus on HTML 5 right now. The Safari team went out and said that they never intend to support XHTML 2, and Safari, Firefox, and Opera are all pushing for future *HTML* development. The XHTML 1.x line has lost favor by all major browser developers and the W3C. It isn't the future, it's the past. Sorry. - xekko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Google cache has it: http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:http://www.webdevout.net/articles/beware-of-xhtml&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&sa=G&strip=1
- Angostura, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8"Markup is presentation". Wins the award for fundamental missunderstanding in the third sentence.
I was going to ask whether you worked for the IE dev team, until I realised it was too harsh on them. - blackjack75, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Is it me or did you just end your comment by giving < head >?
- Oatmeal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Google cache:
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:SzWzV6dFtZQJ:www.webdevout.net/articles/beware-of-xhtml+site:webdevout.net+xhtml&hl=en&client=firefox-a&strip=1
edit: er, whoops..someone already posted a mirror - geekitechture, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@fkr3
The "unnecessarily bloated and slow" portion of your comment irks me. How else would you have text delivered to browsers except through HTML and XHTML? Would you have it delivered through Flash, Javascript (big no-no, by the way, you are never supposed to force text through a script),etc.? What an inane way to try to win an argument that you just can't seem to let go. Have you ever actually formatted a page in XHTML?
I spent less than a year formatting text for HTML 4.01 compliance, then switched to XHTML once I realized it's benefits (that was well over a year ago) and I have never looked back.
You do realize that coding is much *simpler* in XHTML, don't you, and that you use much less code because you can move *every* presentational feature of your markup into CSS style sheets, and that browsers consistently render XHTML better than they do HTML because XHTML is simply correct, stitctly enforced markup, right?
One of those standards, for the easiest example, is closing all open tags (and closing them in correct order) before opening up your next tag. This way browsers can "read" exactly where the markup for certain words ends and the next bit of markup begins. This results in faster, improved rendering in modern browsers that is prone to less mistakes, such as aplying an open font tag to an entite document, which most browsers will do if not given more precise instructions.
Not only that, but by making web documents machine-readable, they become more easilty indexed, categorized, and ranked by search engines and other archival methods, which is, the way I understand it, the whole damn point, so people don't have to sift through trillions of documents *by hand* or with specially designed programs just to figure out what's what.
What is your solution for formatting text and making it machine readable if not HTML and XHTML? I would love to hear your answer. - esquilax, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4the only "danger" is that you might switch someday to serving it as application/xhtml+xml and the browser will choose a different parser and your document will look wrong, or have a validation error, and not work at all. but if you bother writing a valid document and know what you're doing, this is really a non-problem.
take away result: you can use XHTML if you know what you're doing. - edg3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Use the Google Cache link posted above ( http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:http://www.webdevout.net/articles/beware-of-xhtml&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&sa=G&strip=1 ) and you can still read it, although it's extremely slow.
- geodescent, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10I think there's a divide between when to use one over the other, and what your goal is probably has a lot to do with that. From a design and maintenance standpoint, XHTML is by far the better choice because the modular separation of content and format (css, etc) allows you to quickly implement changes across large websites.
HTML on the other hand, I liken to VB6: to be used when you need quick deployment. - Dracos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4If Internet Explorer supported the correct mime type for XHTML, this would be a moot point.
People who claim to be developers and advocate plain HTML are lazy, throwback dinosaurs who probably wouldn't know a DOCTYPE if it smacked them in the <head> - Nanobe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Oh really? Why does Safari say to use HTML instead of XHTML? They said in the official Safari blog that Safari supports HTML better than XHTML. They also said they don't plan to support XHTML 2 when it comes out, and that they're instead throwing their weight behind HTML 5.
Tell me what these supposed "advanced features" of XHTML are. Parsed as XML? For the vast majority of "XHTML" pages on the Web, no major browser will parse them as XML under normal circumstances. Because of the serious ignorance out there about XHTML, most of that content *can't* be parsed as XML.
And presentational markup has nothing to do with HTML vs. XHTML. They both have presentational markup, and in both you can separate content and presentation if you choose. They're exactly the same in that regard.
Please read the article. You obviously didn't. I wrote the article because of all the myths out there, and it sounds like you've bought into a lot of them. - tdellaringa, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Hardly anyone even uses "proper xHTML" as you say. The point is people are pushing technology using other methods - html itself is merely a footnote - x or not, it hardly matters anymore. Writing good clean code matters, whether it's HTML 4 or xHTML whatever is pretty much irrelevant other than to indicate your own coding style.
- mtekk, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3esquilax:
The entire point of content/styling separation is that when served different ways the styling is still the same. If the two do not render the same when only the serving type changing (text/html vs application/xhtml+xml) then the browser did something wrong. The title of this article is not even close to accurate, and the submitter did no justice to the author. The only real danger associated with xHTML is assuming it does things that it does not (and was not designed to do). - tofuComputer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4This pedantic and its B.S. We are steadily moving forward globally towards unified standards adoption by utilizing XHTML/CSS. So what if IE serves it as tag soup? IE is a broken browser and is dying a slow death anyway (IE = "Internet Error"). And now that Apollo is on the scene it makes even more sense to code within standards rather than code for a given browser.
- jbarnum, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3One note: you are using the term "valid" differently than an XML practitioner would. To an XML developer, valid means that the document complies with a DTD or XML Schema, and has nothing to do with the W3C validator. And thus, in XML, any document that is valid is also well formed.
- noahhoward, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Google text-only, if you don't want to wait for the images. http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:http://www.webdevout.net/articles/beware-of-xhtml&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&sa=G&strip=1
- dent, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3There is nothing wrong with the XHTML standard, in fact, it actually produces more consist and cleaner code. It is the browsers that are at fault, both from conformance and performance perspectives. Arguments for using HTML over XHTML will eventually be fruitless as technology improves (thanks Opera and Firefox!!!, Screw you Microsoft).
This article only has merit if you don't consider the above and you choose to believe that the world will never change. - bamapachyderm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3@ugm2099:
http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:http://www.webdevout.net/articles/beware-of-xhtml&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&sa=G&strip=1
FTA: "The following are just a few of the countless sites that use an XHTML doctype but, as of this moment of writing, completely fail to load or otherwise work improperly when parsed as XML, thus missing the whole point of XHTML. The authors of most of these sites are quite prominent in the web standards community — many are involved in the Web Standards Project (WaSP) — yet they have still fallen victim to the pitfalls of current use of XHTML. In fact, I have found that nearly all XHTML websites owned by WaSP members have failures when parsed as XML.
You could consider this a "shame list" of sorts. These are the same people who are supposed to be teaching others how to use web standards properly, yet they have written markup that basically depends on browsers treating it incorrectly. But the main point of this list isn't to pick on individuals; it's to reinforce the fact that even so-called experts at web standards have trouble juggling the different ways XHTML will inevitably be handled on the Web. And what benefit does it bring? None of the following sites make use of anything XHTML offers over HTML.
You can test a page's actual XHTML rendering in Firefox using the Force Content-type extension and setting the new content-type to application/xhtml+xml."
---------------
You'll recognize the names in the list. - Nanobe, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Read the page you linked to. "This document is a Note made available by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for your information. Publication of this Note by W3C indicates no endorsement by W3C or the W3C Team, or any W3C Members."
A W3C note is basically a document some random person at the W3C wrote and the W3C as a whole decided not to endorse it. You might as well have linked to some random person's blog post and called it the official word. - echeese, on 10/12/2007, -14/+16There are plenty of benefits to XHTML, but because of the lack of support that I do not use XHTML on my site, and instead stick with HTML 4.01 Strict.
- bamapachyderm, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"no: there are no women I KNOW that know all about XHTML"
Fixed that for you. Maybe you should get out more. - Nanobe, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5kingofthegreens: Uh, no.
HTML allows you to use the link element, style element, style attributes, and presentational elements for styling.
XHTML allows you to use the link element, style element, style attributes, and presentational elements for styling.
Oh, and XHTML also supports an XML stylesheet processing instruction, which browsers only support when the document is parsed as XML, which Internet Explorer won't do.
So there's no difference between HTML and XHTML in this regard. XHTML doesn't *discourage* presentational markup any more than HTML does. - REDBLIND, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Either Adobe or Microsoft is going to dominate the internet over the next year or two. The irony of that is it's the complete opposite of the purpose of the W3's standards, and a result of their complete and utter failure to progress as the internet did."
I absolutely agree with you. Adobe Flex and maybe Microsoft Silverlight will rule rich internet applications if the next few years. For the old school thinkers out there that don't agree, just wait and see. - SpookyET, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Mozilla.com: XHTML 1.0 Strict
Opera.com: XHTML 1.0 Strict
So, he took one man's voice and applied it to the entire organisation. - pete01010, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Most developers learning to use XHTML often forget to use the proper DOCTYPE declaration. There are currently three: strict, transitional, and frameset. These declaration instructs the browser on how to parse and render the page. Modern browsers will honor those declarations and render the pages accordingly. For compatibility, older browsers will just ignore it all together. However, there will always be some browsers like IE that just doesn't comply with web standards ( http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2 ).
The benefits of CSS+XHTML is far greater then that of HTML 4.0.1 structure layers and inline styles. Innovation is about moving forward not back.
The choice to use XHTML or HTML 4.0.1 comes down to the individual project needs, the type of browsers to support, and how much separation of presentation and structure layers the developer wants to achieve.
With proper coding and understanding of the limitations for each browser; my experience with XHTML has been good. I have not encountered any significant problems to deter its use. - pezholio, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I just prefer XHTML Transitional, it looks pretty and the sense of satisfaction when my pages validate cannot be beaten! I'm a little wary of moving over to strict, but I'm sure I will in time...
- essjay, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2The reason resources like that use XHTML instead of HTML is because they realise that HTML is dead. It has been for a long time. Next time I write an article that misquotes people, uses comments out of context and generally has no foundation in the real world I think I'll just link to a bunch of my own articles to give it an appearance of authority. There's only one reason for using HTML over XHTML, and it begins with "I" and ends in "ncompetence".
- swazooe, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4everyone in favour of HTML is being dugg down =[
HTML ftw! - Nanobe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I didn't take one man's voice.
For Opera, I took three people's voices: Håkon Wium Lie, the CTO of Opera and the guy who first came up with the idea of CSS; Anne van Kesteren, a well-known and influential web standards expert who works for Opera; and Ian Hickson, long-time code contributor for Opera and Mozilla and one of the top guys behind the WHATWG which lead to the W3C's decision to focus back on HTML development. All three have a lot of influence within the W3C.
For Mozilla, I quoted the official FAQ. If that doesn't represent the opinion of the company, they should change it. -
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