RE: type attribute (Re: Site Maps and nested navigation)

Hi, David

	Please, correct me if I'm wrong... I've been developping web applications in XHTML for some time now and, although I'm aware of the pros and cons of serving my pages as text/html, I still think it may be the right choice because :
	- I believe my pages are much more evolutive (even if I'll have to re-work some aspects, my pages will be readier when user agents will be capable to support them as application/xhtml+xml)
	- XHTML is the natural evolution of HTML4

	I've created some reflexes writting in XHTML, and I believe they will avoid me a lot of re-work in the future and make my pages live longer. 
	Or am I missing something?

	Cheers!
	Angela



-----Message d'origine-----
De : w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:w3c-wai-ig-request@w3.org]De la
part de David Dorward
Envoyé : mercredi 7 décembre 2005 16:40
À : w3c-wai-ig@w3.org
Objet : Re: type attribute (Re: Site Maps and nested navigation)



On Wed, Dec 07, 2005 at 03:19:00PM +0000, Stuart Smith wrote:

> Moving on a little - whats the beef with XHTML?

The nutshell version is that if you serve it as application/xhtml+xml
then you find user agent support is tiny. If you serve it as text/html
then you have to follow Appendix C to be "HTML Compatable" so it works
with HTML 4.x user agents - except that Appendix C doesn't make it
entirely HTML compatable and conforming user agents (like w3, which
I'm given to understand is, when combined with emacspeak, a popular
choice of screen reading browser on FOSS platforms) will interpret
"foo<br />bar" as:

foo
>bar

... which is quite correct for HTML 4.x.

There's also the serious problem of cargocultists using XHTML without
understanding it, leading to such delights as:

<style type="text/css">
<!--
/* Som CSS */
-->
</style>

Which is a pretty serious mistake, but goes unnoticed because it is
(a) valid and (b) works when served as text/html

If you are serving it as text/html you aren't getting any of the
benefits of XHTML, so there are only negatives to choosing it over
HTML 4.01.

> I thought it was recommended?

By some people, but as far as I can tell, its more becuase they want
to push XML, or think the latest must be the greatest, then becuase
it gives any practical benefits on today's WWW (or the WWW for at
least the next few years).

-- 
David Dorward                                      http://dorward.me.uk

Received on Wednesday, 7 December 2005 16:05:47 UTC