Velociraptor wrote:but still, there is nowhere a *necessity* to use one or the other.
No definitly not, it's a matter of personal preferance. But the improved effectivness of the W3C validator is why I made the switch from HTML to XHTML a few years back, and I definitly recomend others to do the same.
After all you also risk to get *more* problems with XHML at the current time, if you want to make your web page compatible with older browsers like NS 4.x.
Hmm, exactly what problems would that be? Don't recall bumping into any NS 4 HTML vs XHTML incompabilities following the W3C XHTML compability recomendations.
My argument is just that the statement "everybody should use XHTML and CSS" should be replaced by "everybody should avoid non-standard code, if possible".
Yes, that is a better point of view. =)
But incidently that often means to use XHTML and CSS becuse it's most practical
I would also argue that if you have the choice between absolute standards-compliance and making the site browsable by as many browsers as possible, you should go for the latter.
I would say that actually depends a bit on the functionallity of the site.
If you have an online comercial site that sells stuff, obviously the page working in all browsers is priority 1, or else you lose income.
However in a noncomercial enviroment (private homepages etc), I think standards are more important then providing 100% compability with old browsers. Of cource one should preferably do it in a way that makes the page "degrade gracefully" in old buggy browers (ie the page gets to look uglier and might lose some extras, but the content is still accessible).
If people don't lose anything by using a serverly outdated browser, where is the motivation to upgrade? And if users don't upgrade their old crappy browsers, how will the comercial sites ever be able to take the step and use valid markup?
[quote="Velociraptor"]but still, there is nowhere a *necessity* to use one or the other.
[/quote]
No definitly not, it's a matter of personal preferance. But the improved effectivness of the W3C validator is why I made the switch from HTML to XHTML a few years back, and I definitly recomend others to do the same.
[quote]
After all you also risk to get *more* problems with XHML at the current time, if you want to make your web page compatible with older browsers like NS 4.x.
[/quote]
Hmm, exactly what problems would that be? Don't recall bumping into any NS 4 HTML vs XHTML incompabilities following the W3C XHTML compability recomendations.
[quote]
My argument is just that the statement "everybody should use XHTML and CSS" should be replaced by "everybody should avoid non-standard code, if possible".
[/quote]
Yes, that is a better point of view. =)
But incidently that often means to use XHTML and CSS becuse it's most practical :D
[quote]
I would also argue that if you have the choice between absolute standards-compliance and making the site browsable by as many browsers as possible, you should go for the latter. [/quote]
I would say that actually depends a bit on the functionallity of the site.
If you have an online comercial site that sells stuff, obviously the page working in all browsers is priority 1, or else you lose income.
However in a noncomercial enviroment (private homepages etc), I think standards are more important then providing 100% compability with old browsers. Of cource one should preferably do it in a way that makes the page "degrade gracefully" in old buggy browers (ie the page gets to look uglier and might lose some extras, but the content is still accessible).
If people don't lose anything by using a serverly outdated browser, where is the motivation to upgrade? And if users don't upgrade their old crappy browsers, how will the comercial sites ever be able to take the step and use valid markup?