On 13 Mar 2002, at 6:14, Kehvan M. Zydhek wrote:

[starting out with HTML or XHTML]

> HTML allows frames, XHTML (Strict) does
> not, and thus the target attribute, even if used to pop open a new
> browser, is not allowed. HTML4 still allows FONT tags (though it whiines
> because they're deprecated), XHTML does not.

That's pretty pointless; transitional XHTML allows all your favorite 
tagsoup too.
HTML4 strict doesn't allow frame elements and attributes or the font 
element either; talking about strictness:
what in &deity's name is a 'font tag' anyway?

Strict HTML4 is way better than transitional XHTML, except for the 
buzz word factor.

Furthermore there already seems to be an urban legend claiming that 
XHTML automagically seperates content and presentation.
Well, it doesn't; the author does that (or not).

The new trend on the horizon:
<div class="verybig">Hello world</div>
instead of
<font size="6">Hello world</font>

> The argument against my above recommendation is for older noncompliant
> browsers like NS4.x.

I would worry about newer noncompliant UAs like Internet Exploiter for 
windows much more.
One of the funniest things is that XHTML documents with a legal XML 
declaration trigger quirk mode in IE6 :D

There's absolutely no point in using XHTML if it's served and parsed 
as text/html btw; the whole backwards compatibility idea of 
teminating empty elements with a slash within the start tag only 
'works' because traditional GUI monsters didn't ever use any kind of 
SGML compliant parsing mechanism.

I'd like to rephrase that:
Simply serving XHTML as text/html is harmful.

Cheers




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