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Posted by Marc on 01/13/06 12:11
Thanks for taking the time to write an extensive reply cwdjrxyz, please
see my comments. :-)
cwdjrxyz wrote:
> The most important thing is that you use some valid type of html. Even
> old 3.2 would serve for very simple pages and is still understood by
> most browsers. However it is quite common for many pages from large
> corporations to be written in a html soup ranging from html 3.2 to
> xhtml levels. Some such pages likely were started many years ago and
> just added to by various people over the years. It is no surprise that
> some such pages have problems with some common browsers and often fail
> and must be patched at new browser upgrades.
We always validate our (X)HTML markup and CSS styling, and I'm all to
aware of the html soup websites you refer to - we're often asked to work
on websites like this and we usually say that it would be cheaper for us
to start from scratch and build the website again.
> Concerning xhtml 1.1, it can be used if you make the effort to learn it
> well. At a minimum, in addition to writing valid html 1.1 code, you
> must set up your server to serve the page with the mime type of
> application/xhtml+xml associated with the extension .xhtml, or you can
> also serve as .xml. If you serve a page written in valid xhtml with the
> extension .html on most servers, you are just serving the page as html
> and might as well use 4.01 strict. When you serve true xhtml 1.1 with
> the proper mime type, you will find that it will be viewed well on the
> recent Mozilla family browsers(Firefox, Mozilla, and Netscape) and
> Opera. There are a few bugs in some browsers that can be overcome, such
> as a CSS body background color one on the Mozilla family browsers.
Regarding serving an XHTML page with a different mimetype, why should we
do this? Is it because the browsers do not understand the XHTML
extension? Most of our pages have a .php extension, so what happens in
these cases - what mimetype would the server pass? How would the
browser interpret it?
> However, IE6 will not display a true xhtml page served correctly, and
> rumor has it that neither will the upcoming IE7. You could write a
> special page for IE in html 4.01 strict as well as the xhtml 1.1 page.
> However, there is a way around this. The server and browser exchange
> information when they first connect. The server can ask the browser if
> it can handle the correct mime type for true xhtml. This is taken care
> of by a php include at the very top of the page that replaces
> everything above the head tag of the page, and the page is given an
> extension of .php .
I understand your logic, but what about when a user has the ability to
use HTML in a webform which will then be displayed on the website? How
do you make sure this is valid and inline with the doctype being used?
Isn't that a bit overkill?
> There can be complications if you use some javascript. For example,
> document.write is not allowed in xhtml 1.1 and use of it may cause the
> page not to display or just give an xml error message. The page is
> parsed as xml when you serve it correctly, and there is no telling what
> a document.write might generate such as unclosed tags which are fatal
> for some xml applications. Thus document.write can not be allowed.
> However this can be overcome by writing some of the script in php on
> the server which then downloads what the document.write would have
> generated on the browser, so the xml parser is happy and can check
> everything for closing tags etc.
Generally we don't use JavaScript, but an exception would be Google
AdSense banners which give you some JS to incorporate to display the
banner - again - how do we know that this JS is inline with our doctype?
> I have written well over 100 pages in html 1.1 that are served
> correctly. Once you have done this several times, it takes very little
> more time that using html 4.01 strict, so for me it is no longer a big
> deal. My only advice is that if you use xhtml 1.1, do it right. Else
> stick with html 4.01 strict.
>
> The reason for xhtml is to make PC html code XML pure. There are now
> many other computing devices, and XML has become the standard for
> information exchange between them. Xhtml 1.1 greatly improves the XML
> purity, but it still does not go quite far enough. The higher levels of
> xhtml in the works will require new browsers.
I've written most of my pages in XHTML 1 Strict or Transitional over the
last 2 years. I've never noticed any bugs which can be attributed to my
choice of doctype, but then, maybe I wouldn't notice that...?
> What code you should be using depends on your background and what kind
> of pages you write. If you work for someone else, the code you should
> use is what they demand, although some bosses are open to suggestion.
> If you are your own boss, there are many options. If you are writing
> general pages to sell things to a wide variety of people, you usually
> can not get too exotic in the code you use. If you are writing for a
> network where you can control everything, you can use about any kind of
> code you wish. And there are many other levels between these two
> extremes.
I run a small company and one of our services is web development for
local businesses. We host our own websites, so we have server root
access and the freedom to do things as we wish.
My main reason for asking was because I'm currently programming a big
CMS for our use (we won't be distributing it), and it will be one script
outputting every page, so I wanted to make sure I used the best doctype
for the job from the start.
Any more info or advice would be much appreciated.
Marc
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