<...> > I code in xhtml Strict and serve it as text/html. My code is > future-proof, valid and well structured. If I code in HTML4, > there is less "need" for writing properly structured documents.
Too bad if quality of code depends on choice between HTML and XHTML. > If at some point in the future browsers understand xhtml served > as xthml, changing the way it's served is a relatively simple > operation. Re-coding from HTML to xhtml (and unlearning bad > coding habits) is not as simple. Yep, changing will be the changing the line in servers config. Not so simple for majority of happy XHTML coders will be to find out, why CSS stopped working (case sensativity), what had happened with bacgrounds (html vs. body issue), why JavaScript is not working anymore (document.write, *NS and <!-- ..script here... //--> issues), why document does not show up at all, and browsers throw ugly error (unrecognized entities and other issues). Or do you claim, that all those things are showed and explained to the newbies? What I see is "lowercase tags, quote attributes" staff. XHTML is more "dangerous" because of the way how errors are treated and thus requires more knowledge. Coding something in XHTML does not make it automaticly better. > > Plus, I'm sure you've read Ian Hickson's "Serving XHTML as > > text/html considered harmful" article?! > > One man's view, based on an assumption that people will write > xhtml tagsoup. Even if they do, they will find out soon enough. In a very painful way. And from what I've seen I can say his assumption is pretty correct. If IE7 team cannot tell application/xhtml+xml from application/xml+xhtml what can we expect from newbies? It is pretty easy to check, all we need is some online tool which, given an url can resend page's content with application/xhtml+xml. Then grab those XHTML pages and see what happens. > > In the case of IE and XHTML, there isn't even limited support > > for it, there's none at all. > > While technically correct, it is misleading, particularly for > newbies, who might read it as "don't code in xhtml - people with > MSIE will not be able to view your site". It's not true if the > page is served as text/html. What is the point to teach begginers The Bad Thing (tm). If they are unspoiled begginers, they can learn to code properly whaterver language is. And HTML4 serverd as text/html does not rely on any unimplimented features. <...> > > I think it's important for beginners to learn correctly from > > the beginning. > > Exactly. Teach them properly structured xhtml 1.0 and serve it > in a MIME type that the browsers people use can work with. Ready > to reap the benefits of X(HT)ML later, when browsers support it. > Benefits of XHTML, which are? And speaking of the future browsers and "one man's view": http://annevankesteren.nl/2005/11/xhtml-advocates http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200511/choosing_html_or_xhtml/ http://annevankesteren.nl/2005/11/draconian Regards, Rimantas -- http//rimantas.com/ (in XHTML - that's WP fault). ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
