James Green wrote:
>
> Gervase Markham wrote:
>...
> > What _benefits_ are there in using XHTML over HTML 4.01 Strict? I'm
> > not going to post Henri's opinion here a third time, but I do agree
> > with it - using XHTML without enforcing well-formedness at the
> > browser is just asking for trouble.
>...
> Just spoke with dbaron. While he didn't go into detail, the essence
> was that xhtml wasn't ready to serve mozilla.org. Quite what isn't
> ready (the specs or the clients) we didn't go into, although hints
> were made. Basically, it's a no-no in his opinion from what I could
> tell.
>...
Well, I just spoke with Ian Hickson on IRC ... He had no problem with
serving XHTML 1.0 Transitional as text/html. Then I mentioned that the
site in question was mozilla.org, and he said: `Oh. Then I'm with what
henris and dbaron said.' His explanation was filled with much
hand-waving and mentioning of `tag soup', and I thought I understood it,
but I can't remember the gist of it now. :-/ And I still don't know why
XHTML Transitional exists, if it wasn't meant to be sent as text/html.
However. Apparently my fears of using HTML making it more difficult to
migrate to XML later were groundless; Ian tells me it would be trivial
to write a utility to convert from HTML 4.01 to XHTML 1.0. And in that
case, I have no objection to using HTML (apart from my own personal bias
towards XHTML, which is a result of having inadvertently written all my
Web pages in XHTML since before XML was invented).
I cannot take seriously, however, any suggestion that we use Strict
rather than Transitional. People would laugh at us. `Ooo, if their Web
browser is so great, why is their Web site is all gray and boring?' We
need to have a BODY element with all color attributes filled in (as
mozilla.org does now), for the next three or four years until browsers
without style sheet support drop off the radar. (Note that in the next
couple of years, the Web at large may well be asking users of Navigator
4.x and Internet Explorer 4.x: `please turn off style sheet support in
your browser, because if you don't you're making life extremely
difficult for the rest of us'.)
> [ MPT: links and management systems ]
>...
I don't need to respond to Gervase's objections here, since Fantasai did
that very well already. :-)
>...
> I don't think we can prevent linkrot entirely, simply because we
> cannot predict the future. However if the structure is natural and
> linear (/en/news/2001/01/10 is a good example imo, as is
> /en/developer/building/unix or whatever)
Erm, no. Language should be done using the Accept-Language: HTTP header,
not the URL. On the occasions that you needed to link to a particular
language version (e.g. `Does this translation look all right to you?'),
you'd use something like
<http://mozilla.org/contribute/hacking/build/unix/?de>.
>...
> From the conversation I had with Dawn Endico Sunday evening, I think
> she will accept HTML 4.01 Strict with CSS providing Netscape 4.x gets
> a reduced stylesheet that does not expose the layout bugs in it, or
> none at all.
>...
AFAIK, this can be done by using an @import command in the main
stylesheet, since that is a command which 4.x does not recognize.
--
Matthew `mpt' Thomas, Mozilla user interface QA
Mozilla UI decisions made within 48 hours, or the next one is free
