Moving from HTML 3.2 to HTML 4...

Hi, folks!

A client of mine has a site that appears to be getting a lot of traffic,
compared to a year ago. With that in mind, he wants me to completely re-vamp
the website, reducing loading time, tarting up the appearance, and
maintaining a complete-through-and-through corporate theme. So far, no
trouble - that's a grist-of-the-mill 'can do' situation.

The problem is this: The server logs seem to indicate that the site is
visited by browsers of level 4 and above (IE4 + and NN4 +). Since both
should be able to handle HTML4 with ease, I am seriously considering
changing the DTD of the site from 3.2 to 4, and incorporating stylesheets as
well.

I would then be able to remove the button images, and rely on straight text
and hover (I know NN doesn't support the a.hover element!), thus drastically
improving loading time (and cutting the file sizes as well, due to the
removal of the JavaScript required to make the button rollovers work!).

I'm currently leaning about 70:30 in favour of this move, but need to know
if anyone can see any potential pitfalls with this proposed move of HTML
standard.

The current site is at http://www.socom.co.uk/. The current server stats
(covering part of January and most of February, from when we got SOCOM their
domain name and fresh hosting) are at www.socom.co.uk/stats.

Anyone?

Best regards,

Roger Stenning
Intelligent Web Design Services
    http://iws.n3.net/
Contact me for my PGP Public Key.

Webmaster for the Impossible Scenarios Group
    http://www.the-isg.co.uk/index.html

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