Steve Olive wrote: [snip]
Are we wrong?
If so, why is this so wrong?
Should we go back to teaching HTML 4.01?
Hi Steve,
When I first started on standards (ca 18 months ago), I read a lot of
things which told me I should be converting to XHTML. so I did. But,
like most 'new' people, I served it as text/html. (But it did seem
'cool' :-)
More recently, thanks to Lachlan and others, I've come to learn that
this is primarily pointless, insomuch as you really need to do it
'properly' to get any benefit from it. And, if you do it properly
(served as application/xhtml+xml) you'll have a lot of headaches, not
least of which is IE, as you say. The only way around that I know is to
use PHP to serve the correct mime types etc to the browser being used,
and indeed I've done this (purely as an exercise) on my site below.
However, I wouldn't dream of doing this on a 'real world' site for a
commercial outlet, so that approach ultimately doesn't get us anywhere -
at the moment. But what of the future? Do we want to be 'ready'?
Personally (and that's all it can be) I like Georg's approach, which is
to construct in strict xhtml (1.0 or even 1.1) and do it properly. This
way will highlight whether your stuff is 'well-formed' or not (see:
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#sec-well-formed
Then, when you are happy with it, you can serve it as text/html,
confident that all is well! It is a valuable discipline! So, my
feeling is that, whatever path you choose (html4.01 or xhtml) you should
keep to 'strict' doctypes. If you only have one choice, it's sensible to
stick to HTML4.01 strict. The important point, as the others have said,
is that the student fully understands the implications.
Just my 2p's worth.
Best Regards,
Bob McClelland
Cornwall (UK)
www.gwelanmor-internet.co.uk
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