Oddly enough I've been thinking about making a similar post.
I would have said all you said and then added two more tidbits.
1. Just read on some blog (pointed to from this list) where doctypes
are useful only for validation, otherwise of no use.
2. A friend just got back into the web design game after a long time
away. He sent me his site: pure HTML 2.0, no doctype lots of tables
and the usual tag soup.
I mentioned to him that things had changed and he should "get with"
the modern way of doing things. To his various questions as to why, I
gave all the right answers, but in the end he said if it works, why
change? I viewed his site in all my various MAC & WIN browsers, it
worked just fine in all of them.
Bob
Just over a year ago, I decided to improve my knowledge of CSS,
which (although I'd been using it for a few years) seemed a good
idea. I joined the CSS list, then this one, I read Jeffrey Zeldman
(and a lot of web sites about standards) and everything was rosy
in the garden. Of course, I had to overcome the obstacle of
thinking in terms of content/presentation and doing away with
tables etc, but once I'd got through the trauma of floats etc it
all made sense. I imagine that's much the same for all of us.
However, just lately (a few months maybe) there has been an
increasing number of folk arguing about xhtml and xml and mime
types and oh dear dear, headaches all around. The result? I now
feel totally confused (I admit I don't really understand all that
mime stuff - yet) but more importantly, my confidence has gone.
Since Zeldman (and lots of others) told me it was a good idea to
write xhml strict I've done exactly that - every site I've done in
the last year has been done in xhtml strict. I did it because
people were telling me that it was a good thing, so that what I've
done was easily portable later on. So have I done a daft thing? I
really don't know!
I'm absolutely positive I'm not alone in feeling this insecurity
and, on the face of it, Lachlan may well have a point about
newcomers keeping it simple at first. What I do know is that, like
T.R.Valentine, I do wish someone could tell me [definitively] how
this xhtml should be presented/marked up so I can feel a bit
happier again . . .
Just thinking out loud, and <em>not</em> wanting a mass of mails
from different camps all claiming different things are the 'right'
answer.
--
Best Regards,
Bob McClelland
Cornwall (UK)
www.gwelanmor-internet.co.uk
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