Re: Problems with validating <table> elements

> And the suggestion to use xhtml doesn't work
> either, because in the real world we must support a range of browsers,
many
> of which are unable to render xhtml properly.

Oh, really?

I beg to differ.

And I have a real-world XHTML-based site that proves your statement isn't
true.

I run an activist site which follows a talk radio show. The demographics of
the audience range from little old ladies with only library Internet access,
to the average Joe with Netscape 4.x, to sophisticated technology types that
created some of the hardware and software we all are using (and more likely
to be using the latest browsers), and I just redesigned the site to use
XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS-2 (both of which validate).

I don't have a choice--I have to make sure it's visible by this entire range
of visitors.

It looks best with 6.0 and higher browsers, looks OK on 5.x browsers, but is
still readable on 3.x and 4.x browsers (though none of the fancy layout is
visible on these crappy contraptions).

No, the site doesn't look the same on the older browsers, but the text (and
important graphics) are still visible. And it gives visitors a good reason
to upgrade their browser, without penalizing them too much. And the
different appearance is an artifiact of using CSS-2 for layout--it doesn't
have anything to do with using XHTML.

The only real problems you'll see are that the PNG images I use in a few
places disappear on older browsers and the 3.x browsers don't handle the
typesetting characters I use, such as em dashes and curly quotes. And
neither of these problems are germane to XHTML, either.

Received on Monday, 8 October 2001 18:07:00 UTC