Gunlaug Sørtun wrote:
I'm more or less aware of how easy it is to mess things up, so for the last 2 years I've used the following procedure:-------- - Creating an xhtml 1.0 document. - Cleaning out 'human bugs' in HTMLTidy -> 'convert to xml'. - Serving it as 'xhtml' with the extension '.xhtml' to browsers that can make anything out of it - Opera, Moz/FF, Safari - internally and on line. Info: application/xhtml+xml - no errors - no apparent problems. - Changing the extension down to '.html' to get wide-spread support, with no additional changes to the document. - Run it through any browser I care to support - and maybe a few others and the validator for good measure - no apparent problems. -------- Is this enough 'real world' testing in order to secure quality of code so it can be served as either 'application/xhtml+xml' or 'text/html' by choice ?
Yes, because you have developed and tested under both XHTML and HTML conditions, you already know your pages will survive the transition to true XML when the time comes. You would have already worked out any incompatibilities between the handling of scripts, stylesheets, encoding issues, etc. You are clearly not a beginner and you have made a very informed choice, and that is fine.
Beginners, however, would not, nor can they be expected to be aware of all these issues and more often then not, develop XHTML in a purely HTML environment. It is this that will cause all the problems in the future, if they ever attempt to switch to true XML, and why I very strongly advocate that beginners start with HTML, not XHTML.
-- Lachlan Hunt http://lachy.id.au/ ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
