Mark Hensler — Thu, 03 Oct 2002 05:46:39 +0000

In short, I think that XHTML 2 may be healthy for the net, but unhealthy for webmasters.

ROB — Thu, 03 Oct 2002 04:35:28 +0000

i agree with megan, anyone who has been around for a few years can appreciate the headway that has been made, especially now that netscape 4x is all but out of the pictures (even moreso for javascript programmers)

its gotten ALOT better, and continues to get better, although it's obviously still extremely far from perfect.

Lately i've noticed applications i develop with Mozilla 1.0 for the most part look identical in IE 5/6 and Netscape 6 (obviously - same engine) which very little or no modification. Perhaps im just getting real good at writing portable code, but i think the browsers are just getting better. actually im sure its a combination, there still are tricks you need to know to but the browsers have improved drastically.

Busy — Wed, 02 Oct 2002 22:59:57 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by jkd
IE supports up to XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Of course, it doesn't support XML namespaces, so it doesn't support XHTML served as application/xhtml+xml, text/xml, or application/xml (which are all more valid ways of serving it than text/html).

Mozilla supports XHTML 1.1, among other things.

I'm pretty sure Opera 6 also does XHTML 1.1.

Which leads me to wonder where you got the conception that browsers poorly support XHTML?

there are three standards of XHTML, frameset, transitional and strict, so to fully support XHTML all three must be supported.

transitional is pretty well much a tidy HTML, it is very backwards compatiable, allowing such things as font tags, bold tags etc etc (some of which are standard, some are not). Don't even need CSS.
Strict on the other hand wont allow some older HTML and the CSS needed to do the things aren't supported in all late model browsers. there are even some old HTML tags that still dont work in browsers like they are meant to, try the label tag and see the many results that displays (opera6 is worse).
XHTML1 strict doesnt allow the border value on images, try use CSS to make border=0 on linked images

Megan — Wed, 02 Oct 2002 13:25:02 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by The Webmistress
You would have thought by now that the browser programmers would have got together with the W3C and agreed on things rather than everyone doing their own thing and making it harder for us designers!!

But they have! I think that we should consider ourselves lucky that all of the current browsers are supporting the standards as well as they are now. We can finally use CSS, and if people would stop using NS 4 we could use it even more than most of us are at this point. We can write xhtml and if you know what you're doing you don't have to use a whole lot of browser hacks anymore. Opera, Mozilla, and IE support the same standards in the same way (with a few minor differences in interpretation). I think we should be thankful that they've gotten this far. It's a far cry from the way things were 3-4 years ago.

I do think that it's a lot to expect for the browsers to get up to speed on xhtml 2.0 right away. It sounds like the spec isn't even fully defined yet and you would have to give them time to bring their software up to the standard.

jkd — Wed, 02 Oct 2002 10:13:20 +0000

Quote: Originally posted by Busy
but the thing is will browsers fully comply to XHTML2 ? they havent complied to version 1 yet when they said they would.

IE supports up to XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Of course, it doesn't support XML namespaces, so it doesn't support XHTML served as application/xhtml+xml, text/xml, or application/xml (which are all more valid ways of serving it than text/html).

Mozilla supports XHTML 1.1, among other things.

I'm pretty sure Opera 6 also does XHTML 1.1.

Which leads me to wonder where you got the conception that browsers poorly support XHTML?

The Webmistress — Wed, 02 Oct 2002 07:15:51 +0000

You would have thought by now that the browser programmers would have got together with the W3C and agreed on things rather than everyone doing their own thing and making it harder for us designers!!

Busy — Wed, 02 Oct 2002 05:50:24 +0000

but the thing is will browsers fully comply to XHTML2 ? they havent complied to version 1 yet when they said they would.

I have my fingers crossed they do.

Megan — Wed, 02 Oct 2002 01:35:31 +0000

I think that mostly it's the same thing just another, more correct, way of writing things (i.e. instead of ) . I do think that it's going to take a good four years or so for this to really catch on - and it isn't backward compatible, so that'll add some more time while we wait for non-xhtml 2 compatible browsers to drop out of the picture.

I am really looking forward to the simplicity of the menu's, and being able to use any element as a link instead of having to wrap it in an anchor tag.

As for the HTML vs. xhtml debate - HTML just got out of control in terms of what it was meant to do and what people were forcing it to do. It was never meant to be a presentation language, but ended up becoming one when it couldn't keep up with the designers. This got even worse when the two major browsers in the 96-98 browser war decided to implement things differently, which meant that designers had to use browser-specific hacks to get things to look right. So, 1. presentation should be separate from structure. It's just easier that way and 2. if everything is done to one standard you don't have to worry about what your page is going to look like in a different browser, let alone an entirely different browsing device.

jammin — Wed, 02 Oct 2002 00:29:35 +0000

... hmm cant say i like the changes... and just so they know, i liked my tags.

Busy — Wed, 02 Oct 2002 00:10:47 +0000

XHTML enables use by disabled people, wap phones, viewing by tvs ... more of an user friendly information age type thing.

XHTML1 was released back in 2000, has taken this long to catch on, but since the browsers aren't up to speed yet (with CSS) a few people still dont use it.

It's like when everyone started making web pages with frontpage, they all looked the same, now with CSS they all look the same, are very limited in what we can use, but then if the person stats in the browser options they want to use their own style sheets, the layouts go right out the window.

XHTML is how HTML should of been written, tidy, clean code, then XHTML2 (or even 1.something) should of been the introduction of CSS or advanced CSS, IMO they have missed to many steps.

Everyone should start using JSSS hehe (only works in NN4) j/k