Re: Promotion of XHTML

Peter wrote on Tuesday, December 31, 2002 at 9:57:10 AM:

> I agree with Toby. I find XHTML quite easy to use... what's so hard
> about requiring closing tags on everything? In addition, by coding
> as XHTML instead of HTML, a document is more likely to be presented
> the same way across all browsers.

Actually, older HTML browsers have problems with XHTML that they don't
have with HTML. New browsers don't have problems with HTML, but for
example, IE/Win does have problems with XHTML if served as
application/xhtml+xml. HTML and CSS is more likely to be presented
well across many browsers than XHTML and CSS. (What web browser chokes
on HTML but not on XHTML?)

> So it benefits the author to code in XHTML instead of HTML because
> the code will be easier to maintain. Just as an example, I used to
> run into problems on Netscape 4 if I forgot to close a <td> or <tr>.
> And since I hated that browser and did not use it, I generally
> wouldn't catch this right away, then I would have to go back and dig
> through the code to find my missing tag. With XHTML, there is none
> of that.

How does using XHTML make it easier for the author to close every tag?

> In addition, it does help to prepare developers for the next step...
> XML.

That's true. But we were talking about web designers writing what
amounts to HTML4 in XHTML. The only things they'll learn are easily
learnt--tag names are case sensitive, all tags must be closed, etc. I
don't think it's worth writing and rewriting every page in XHTML to
learn what amounts to a few simple rules.

-- 
John

Received on Tuesday, 31 December 2002 23:47:06 UTC