Re: HTML, XHTML, ... ?
David Segall wrote:
"Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> wrote:
Apologies for an off-topic question.
Well, I might have been really terse at your post
that was in the wrong usenet 'major hierarchy', but..
(explanation snipped earlier) shrugs.. yeah, OK.
I'm hoping to collect a few opinions about current best-practise for the
flavour of HTML to use. XHTML ? HTML 4.0 transitional ?
The only pages I will do in '4.01 trans.' any more are
ones where I want to throw in an applet, and am too
lazy to deal with the tag soup mess that Sun
recommends, but then - I write far too many
applet pages anyway.
That has been my ideal *till* now, but..
I am tending to go with the general direction (most)
other posters and say 'stricter the better', and in
specific reference to XHTML. ..
....
The W3C use XHTML 1.0 which is why I chose it. The main arguments
against it from the "standards-obsessed" were first presented by Ian
Hickson <http://hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml>. I don't find them convincing
Me neither. Most of the criticisms presented in
that page seem to focus on what happens to embedded
scripts and styles, and I think that encourages
putting the styles and scripts into external files* referenced
by link/import elements - the way they should be, then
separating styles for advanced and old browsers can be
much easier.
because it seems desirable to head for the latest W3C recommendations
even if they are impossible to implement "correctly".
Anything that helps encourage those (damn) browser
manufacturers to render valid content in a logical
(if not entirely predictable - I like to allow my users
to set their own font size) manner, has got to be a
good thing - far too much time and effort has gone into
second guessing what some crappy, broken HTML was
'supposed' to look like. :-/
...Of course, you
should use CSS for the formatting and the [X]HTML tag based (only) on
the content.
(Assuming I understood your last point correctly).
* ..which ties in with/supports that. Separate the content
from the styles - it makes so much more sense.
Andrew T.