On Sat, Jan 27, 2007 at 03:30:46PM +0000, Duncan Stigwood wrote: > What impact does this have on people who have just made the > transistion to xHTML 1 like me?
Not a lot. XHTML 1 is pretty pointless for authoring webpages in[1] (its more useful for other things such as ATOM documents), and the (previously mentioned) changes in XHTML 2 are so major that the upgrade path from XHTML 1 was never going to be significantly easier then from HTML 4.01. I believe there is an HTML 5 as XML spec somewhere. > I'm an avid supporter of the web standards and have been guiding many > in the ways of xHTML and validating... but it seems the issue is > becoming ever more complicated, rather than clearer, as time goes by. More complicated? Well, using multiple namespaces has always been complicated, but each namespace you add allows you to do more things. If you don't need to do them, then don't use that namespace. If you do need to do them then "complication" is probably a better state of affairs then "you can't". As for HTML 5, well, it does more stuff, so its bigger, and therefore more complicated. It also disambiguates a bunch of stuff in HTML 4, so in some ways it is simpler too. > Personally I feel like despite my best efforts to be a good web > designer, its becoming ever more troublesome and I'm finding > myself spending more time trying to keep on the ball than > actually working and earning a living. With all[2] the new standards you basically have three choices: (1) Wait until they are finished and implemented then decide if they add something useful to you. Reading the occasional spec is not a lot of work, and you can usually recognise something as being outside the realm of what you need to know within a couple fo paragraphs. (2) Join in the development process. This is rather more work, but you may be able to influence the direction of the spec for the better. [1] Appendix C, oh the pain. [2] So that's SVG, MathML, HTML 5 and XHTML 2 as far as current/recent significant developmentss are concerned. That's 4 major specs, none of which are well supported yet, and those which are finished have been available for over a year - it isn't like there's a rush between their release and their being something useful to learn. -- David Dorward http://dorward.me.uk ******************************************************************* List Guidelines: http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm Unsubscribe: http://webstandardsgroup.org/join/unsubscribe.cfm Help: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *******************************************************************
