Hi Kim, Ian Hickson is _not_ saying XHTML is harmful, he is saying that serving up XHTML with the wrong MIME type is bad. At an academic level, he has a point. On a practical level, this does not concern most of us because all current (modern) user agents (browsers, crawlers, gadgets, etc) will process XHTML if it is served-up as HTML. But do try to user the correct MIME type when you can. Here is the definitive word on this topic:
http://www.w3.org/International/articles/serving-xhtml/ To summarize this article, it says "XHTML 1.0 can be served as HTML or XML." Today, the real benefits of XHTML are on the production side. Say your CMS has 1000 documents and you need to change the "class" name of a <div> tag in all 1000 documents. If your content is in XHTML, you can use XML related technologies like DOM or XSLT to process all 1000 documents quickly and accurately because XHTML can be processed by XML parsers. Regards, -Vlad Alexander XStandard Development Team http://xstandard.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kim Kruse" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2004 10:53 AM Subject: [WSG] Is XHTML harmful? > Hi, > > First of all... I'm sorry if this is off topic. > > I've been telling people (the few who asked me and through my website) > to use (valid) xhtml because it a W3C recommendation, it's device > independent, (valid) xhtml can be processed by an XML parser, better > accessibility, less code, faster processing of code in modern browsers, > forward compatibility etc. I guess that's the standard opinion on xhtml > or am I completely of track here? > > After I participated in a discussion over at the Project Seven newsgroup > I'm having doubts! The reason is some very well put arguments from among > others, Al Sparber. One of the arguments was less code. Not even close > to html 4.01 (See sample 1 below), html 4.01 is also device independent > AFAIK. Xhtml is not being processed faster than html 4. Actually there > should be no real reason to use xhtml unless you're using xml. > > _Sample 1 - html:_ > <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" > "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd";> > <html> > <head> > <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> > <title>Untitled Document</title> > </head> > <body> > <p>Hello World. > <p><img src="img.gif" width="10" height="10" alt="some description"> > </body> > </html> > > _Sample 1 - xhtml:_ > <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" > "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd";> > <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";> > <head> > <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" /> > <title>Untitled Document</title> > </head> > <body> > <p>Hello World.</p> > <p><img src="img.gif" width="10" height="10" alt="some description" /></p> > </body> > </html> > > Now what really worries me is this article > http://hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml where xhtml is being considered > "harmfull". Is it harmful ? > > Now I would like to know what your arguments would be for using xhtml. > Not that I can't think for myself... but I'm in doubt if I'm going in > the right direction. > > I would really like to hear your opinions on this matter. > > Kim > ****************************************************** > The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ > > See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm > for some hints on posting to the list & getting help > ****************************************************** > > ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
