Hello Rimantas, Well said and, IMHO, absolutely correct.
-- Best regards, Ric Water & Stone mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] visit our sites: www.waterandstone.com www.researchlaunchpad.com www.balitravelportal.com Friday, September 24, 2004, 8:26:21 AM, you wrote: RL> On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 09:43:31 +1000, Kevin Futter RL> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> I thoroughly agree with David here. Web standards are a means to an end and >> not an end in themselves. The way I see it, the point of web standards is to >> a) separate form from content and both from behaviour; b) make all content >> equally accessible to the widest possible audience; c) provide a >> predictable, reliable model that we can all work with. RL> I am at risk of starting holly war here again, but: please, don't RL> confuse web standards and RL> best practices. a) b) c) are best practices and can be achieved with RL> of without valid code. RL> Web standard (for (X)HTML) is: particular W3C (IETF ones are out of RL> question now days, I guess) specification and accompanying DTD. RL> Your code either complies to those rules or not. If it does not comply RL> by accident - fix it. RL> If it does not comply by intention - remove <!DOCTYPE, cause your code RL> is not standards compliant. RL> It is either valid or not. There is no such thing as 'almost valid' RL> like there is no such thing "a little bit pregnant'. RL> Just like software - it does compile, or it doesn't. And just like RL> software - you may well write piece of code which does compile, but RL> doesn't run, so you can have (X)HTML what validates, but does not RL> follow best practices [ a), b) c) ]. Only web gives us a luxury of RL> having invalid pages that still work. Use with care. >> trying to use 'web standards techniques' for embedding Flash content fails >> at least two of these aims, and isn't worth pursuing just so that some >> software program will 'validate' your code. RL> Yes. If you choose this approach, you may use it. Only if code is not RL> valid by intention - remove <!DOCTYPE, cause it is a lie. See above. RL> I am not obsessed with standards or something. I know "real life" RL> perfectly well - I am coding for web for 8 years now. RL> But honestly, I do not understand, why people try to complicate RL> things. Is it so difficult to grasp - either your code follows defined RL> rules, so it is valid and is that <!DOCTYPE claims it to be, or it RL> does not. If not - there is no such doctype for "almost standard" RL> code, so don't use any. Browsers may have 'almost standard' mode, w3c RL> has not. RL> Or is it something so attractive in document type declaration that RL> people try to keep it even RL> if code is not valid and is not valid on purpose? If your conscious RL> decision is to use invalid RL> (or should I put it mildly - not compliant?) code fine... but what is RL> that erroneous document type declaration doing here? Ditch it. RL> And yes, validation beauty is only skin deep. I will strongly prefer RL> clean (content separated from presentation, markup is semantic, all is RL> accessible) code with no <!DOCTYPE to valid RL> but bloated, table-ridden page suffering from classitis and divitis. RL> Point is - use whatever works for you and your audience, but do not lie. >> If you've done everything else >> pretty close to right, then the only validation you really need is that your >> intended audience sees everything they need to see. After all, Flash content >> isn't that accessible to begin with - insisting on embedding it with >> strictly valid code is a bit like putting handles on an elephant to make it >> easier to carry across a swollen river ... RL> Using Flash you can still provide alternative content for those who RL> cannot see it. RL> Why not to use this possibility? RL> Regards, RL> Rimantas RL> ****************************************************** RL> The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ RL> Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/ RL> Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge RL> To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004 RL> See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm RL> for some hints on posting to the list & getting help RL> ****************************************************** ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ Proud presenters of Web Essentials 04 http://we04.com/ Web standards, accessibility, inspiration, knowledge To be held in Sydney, September 30 and October 1, 2004 See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
