Megan — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 13:15:21 +0000

You should actually read the whole "serving xHTML as HTML is harmful" stuff. That's why #1 on the list up there has got HTML 4 strict. Nothing wrong with that if you understand and believe that side of the debate.

demonhale — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 02:25:01 +0000

Thanks for the links... I think im quite addicted now with validation... although I now like validating to xhtml1.1 and validate the css... What I notice though as you get accustomed to fixing things for validation, the next time you code by hand, you automatically correct the errors, and finally finish with 6 to 25 errors you can fix in 10 minutes...

But its really puzzling why experts tend to ignore the standards they impose, but anyways, I also found this site made from blogger engine that says "I design and develop professional, valid sites for a living. This is my personal attempt to save the internet one webmaster at a time. I know this site doesn't validate. It's Blogger. Get over yourself." . Just show how serious designers are now with validating...

I even recieve dozens of e-mail for putting "we pride ourselves with validation etc.." when our main engine was only html 4.01 validated and the main page shows an xhtml1.0 strict badge... where the main page is actually xhtml1.0 validated. Decided to correct everything.

So anyway, there are actually people who get ticked when your first three pages are validated as xhtml strict and the others only at html4.01 ... this pretty much drives me a little over the edge sometimes...

Megan — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 15:46:13 +0000

Finally found the ALA explaination. They used to have this listed on their Q&A page but for some reason took out most of the actual explaination. The current page simply says "It’s our way of sticking it to The Man." Gee, that's helpful.

So I had to go to archive.org to find this:

Quote: Just kidding. Fair question! Nearly all our content could now be delivered as XHTML 1.0 Strict, which goes even further than XHTML Transitional in separating underlying structure and semantics from visual presentation. But a few of our older articles require attributes that are illegal under XHTML Strict. Rather than switch DOCTYPEs between articles, we chose the DTD that would best serve all our content, old and new.

Um, okay, what-ever. I think that's being a little overly fussy about validation actually. I think I would probably put in the strict anyway, if it was only a few problems on a few pages.

So what about all those other sites? Could be the same problem. I might have to email some of those people and ask (and while I'm at it, ask about the xHTML as HTML thing)

Megan — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 14:18:52 +0000

I tried ALA and molly.com - both look identical in IE with strict and transitional doctypes. So that's not it. If you're talking about display problems, it could be something like IE 5/mac that they wanted to accommodate. However, from what I was able to find out, the big display differences between transitional and strict are the handling of table cells and image spacing in mozilla browsers. But, none of these sites rely on tables or hard coded images for display anyway. So that's not it.

From what I remember about the ALA explaination it had something to do with passing the validator.

Megan — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 13:17:51 +0000

You're right, I only tried in in Opera (but I don't know of a way to reload from cache in IE???). I'd have to save the whole thing. I still don't think that's the reason though.

demonhale — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 02:55:12 +0000

btw Meg, which browser did you try it on? try Ie... the quirks are sometimes directed for Ie...
I hope you can find the ALA reason... Im really interested with these...

Roo — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 21:57:08 +0000

I seem to remember that too.....maybe something to do with IE's issues with good clean valid code, and it's issues with CSS?

Megan — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 17:34:07 +0000

Alright, lets compare standards and strict mode. I can't be bothered to do screenshots right now so you'll have to trust me or try it yourself.

Zeldman.com - minor pixel adjustment when moved to strict (would not be noticeable if you weren't comapring two tabs directly)
Molly.com - same (the text content moves up by 1-2 pixels)
Cameron Moll - same (seems to be spacing around headers that's different)
Simplebits - no noticeable problems (can't seem to get one tab from cache and the other from the live site anymore )

So, I'm pretty sure display problems aren't the issue. I know ALA posted something at one time about why they're using a transitional doctype but I can't find it. I'd assume Zeldman is doing it for the same reason.

Megan — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 16:26:17 +0000

I've never had a problem with layouts chanigng (a lot) when switching to a strict doctype. Not when everything is coded properly, anyway. That's another reason why I think that using strict is better than transitional even if there are a few errors. With strict you always get standards mode (not quirks or Almost standards). Strict means it's rendering correctly.

The other interseting thing here is that most of them don't seem to be bothered by the whole problem with serving xHTML as HTML.

Anyway, I somehow doubt that any of those people are using transitional doctypes because of display problems. I'll have to test that next

Roo — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 17:28:28 +0000

Well I think that since Zeldman pretty much led the standards march and he's always talking about doing things up good and proper, then I would expect perfection from his code. That said, I think he uses his zeldman.com site for experimenting too.

Cameron Moll....yeah he can code well, but that man is more about design....and man can he ever design!