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Posted by Andy Dingley on 10/05/88 11:19
On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 10:22:57 +1200, "windandwaves"
<winandwaves@coldmail.com> wrote:
>What is the most professional standard for creating webpages:
Why lower yourself to the standards of most professionals ? 8-)
>I have been using strict for my websites, but it seems fashionable to go for
>xhtml.
First of all, there are four choices here, not two. Or more plainly, a
choice of HTML 4.01 / XHTML 1.0 _and_ a separate choice of Strict /
Transitional.
Most useful of all is simply to be valid as _something_. Pick one
randomly, but at least achieve it. The biggest benefits are from this,
not which one you pick.
Second biggest benefit is in using a doctype that puts IE into
standards-based rendering, not quirks mode.
XHTML needs to be served as text/html to get anywhere useful on the
existing web (Appendix C etc.) So this also means that some useful XML
features of it, such as namespacing, aren't viable at present. If
you're into SMIL, SVG or RDF metadata, then you might find it acceptable
to serve your XHTML properly as XML, even though that somewhat limits
your audience.
XHTML is useful internally because it allows XML tools within your CMS.
It's also useful to have XML output, because that allows your output to
be an input to some other CMS task. It's also a good long-term idea to
start having your content as cleanly well-formed XML
Transitional is useful because it allows the <a target="..." >
attribute. Some will disagree as to its value, but if you want it,
that's how you get it.
Strict is not particularly useful. It's no magic bullet to make your
markup beautiful. You can still write garbage in Strict. What's useful
is the _attitude_ to using Strict - i.e. dumping <font> and you can
achieve that equally well by marking up sensibly and still labelling it
with a Transitional doctype.
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