Elliotte Harold wrote:
Lachlan Hunt wrote:
Because the fact is that when authors try to use XHTML as text/html,
they inevitibly fail to do so properly. It takes considerable
knowledge and skill to be aware of and handle all issues ranging from
parsing, character encodings to scripts and stylesheets.
All it really takes is minimal tool support. If systems like WordPress
and DreamWeaver that hide the HTML start generating well-formed HTML,
that's half the battle right there.
I think the recent discussion about WordPress proved that isn't going to
happen any time soon.
The other half could be addressed by one little box in the corner of
Firefox's status bar that's a smiley face if the page is valid, and a
frown if it isn't.
Developers already have the option to install extensions for that.
http://users.skynet.be/mgueury/mozilla/
http://relaxed.sourceforge.net/firefox-plugin.html
Most hand authors including myself don't always achieve well-formedness
because nothing pricks us if we don't.
It does when you use the correct MIME type!
Even the tiniest annoyance from a bad page, would cause us to check the
error logs and fix the problems.
The Yellow Screen of Death is about as annoying as you can get. I
really don't understand how you can go on about the benefits of XML
because it requires well-formedness, but then turn around and say XML
can be served as text/html which just makes all your arguments null and
void.
Fixing a page to be well-formed and even valid XHTML is not hard, and
well within the abilities of most people hand authoring HTML.
Hmmm. You obviously haven't seen a lot of the rubbish that many people,
including those that hand code, actually produce. Perhaps you keep
forgetting that people like us who can easily produce well-formed and
valid markup are in the minority.
The problem is when we don't realize we have a problem in the first place.
The problem is that you're using the wrong MIME type.
--
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/
