Re: [wgo] XHTML1.0 Strict vs HTML 4.01

[Ricky Zhou <ricky zhou gmail com>]

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Christian Rose wrote:
> On 12/4/06, Ricky Zhou <ricky zhou gmail com> wrote:
>> * Why doesn't HTML fulfill our requirements?
>> * why is XHTML better than HTML for this project?
Awww, will anybody ever try to give a direct answer to these?

> For all intents and purposes, the mime type issue with XHTML is mostly
> a non-issue, as already explained by Curtis in this thread. Yes, you
> can't use all the benefits of XHTML today given IE's crappy support.
> Is it a reason to avoid XHTML? I believe not.
More precisely, you can't use *any* of the benefits of XHTML when it is
sent with the incorrect mimetype and interpreted as tag soup.  What is
the point of using XHTML if you can't use any of its
improvements/features?  Valid, well-formed HTML is essentially
tag-for-tag equivalent to XHTML, and can be easily moved to XHTML when
the support is there.

> What he then went on to say surprised me even more: This was one of
> the most important factors for him being interested in the job,
> besides the obvious factors of pay, benefits and so on.
Assuming that the choice of web language makes a large difference in
developers' impression of a project, many seasoned web developers would
actually count this as a negative, as it indicates an ignorant/blind
following of whatever "the newest version" is.  Understanding the
differences between XHTML/HTML and the support for both, there is no
earthly reason to abandon HTML at this point.

> Just as nice logos and artwork may attract some people, and nice well
> written docs some others, some nice modern standards-supportive code
> behind the site may make some few visitors more confident that we aim
> to support modern standards.
HTML 4 is a perfectly modern standard (it is the latest that actually
has reasonable support).  Although HTML 4.01 may be 1 month older than
XHTML 1.0 (on no!), it currently has the best support, and I have not
yet seen a single reason to forgo it.

Ricky
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