On Sun, 31 Dec 2006 11:19:57 +0000, Martin Clark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Malcolm Nixon wrote... >>On Sat, 30 Dec 2006 19:56:04 +0000, Martin Clark >><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >>> No code bloat for me! I've >>>got right into CSS for layout which allows for very lean html code for >>>each page. This also makes it easier to pinpoint any errors so that the >>>code validates as strict HTML 4.01. This in turn helps to make sure it >>>appears properly in a range of browsers. >>> >>Why not transitional XHTML > >Because transitional XHTML is a complete waste of time. It is a backward >step from HTML 4.01 as it allows you to get away with all sorts of >deprecated stuff that 4.01 wouldn't allow. Partly because of this, >transitional documents allow browsers to work in "quirks mode" so >results can be unpredictable. > >>or even strick xhtml - even better. > >Yes, XHTML strict is better than XHTML transitional, but not necessarily >better than HTML 4.01. XHTM itself is a hybrid between HTML and XML. IE >cannot parse XHTML so documents have to include a line to tell it to >serve it as text/html. Firefox does not render XHTML incrementally, so >the page will not display until all the code has downloaded. This can >lead to the user staring at a blank screen for several seconds or even >to the page timing out before everything has downloaded. I'm sure most >of us have experienced that happening! I have read of rendering problems >with Safari and Konquerer, too. Martin, This is hardly the place for a debate on XHTML v HTML - so appoloogies to others for this off topic post, I know it causes fierce debate between professional web people. l But for all those references - I could quote many others who say that XHTML is the way to the future, certain in some authorititive manner. perhaps the authorititive is World Wide Web Consortium W3C, who write the standards. http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/2004/xhtml-faq#need W3C website is written in XHTML One of the books recommended by most experts I have talked to is Elizabeth Castro's HTMK for the WWW 5th / 6th edition. She recommended XHTM in the 5th edition in 2002, and even more so in the 6th edition just published. Macromedia - the most widely used tool by professionals defaults to XHTML and puts the necessary headers DOC's etc., and stops browsers going into quirk mode. But even their support forum has people with mixed views on the subject - so we cannot hope to agree on the subject here. so again sorry for being off topic - I'll stop here and if necessary Martin and I can continue on email. Malcolm -- Malcolm
