Re: is anyone interested in XHTML?

> I'm having a very hard time finding _anyone_ in the regular Web
development
> world who is excited about XHTML - or even interested.

  This has been well discussed in other forums, but I'd like to hear the
responses here too.

  The world essentially falls into two groups, those trying to "cross
publish" (tech pubs and such) and those trying to get the most out of the
medium (designers).  For the former XHTML/CSS (et all) are a great idea
because it allows them to move their single source to multiple endpoints.
These people aren't looking for precise control either, even if the medium
in question allows it.  As long as the information gets out there, correct,
then that's a good first pass.

  However the web is currently built by the later group. For these people
the extra weight of the style system is nothing but added complexity.  The
necessity to do one task in two places actually makes the job much harder,
and the advantages of reuse are not really important to them.  Some will
counter that the abilities of CSS to precisely define certain attributes
(say position) will make it important to the designer, but this really
sidesteps the point - those attributes are controlled in CSS and not in HTML
because someone else said that's the way it would be.

  The biggest problem appears to be the tools.  I think that as the tools
blur the line between style and content then this "collective yawn" might go
away and people will start using it without even knowing it.  Sadly WYSIWYG
HTML tools have been out for years now, and they are all still pretty much
bad for one reason or another.

Maury

Received on Thursday, 17 February 2000 08:43:36 UTC