Revisiting XHTML

Revisiting XHTML. Ever since XHTML was introduced in January of 2000, arguments as to its use and rationale have been flung about… [Web Standards Project BUZZ]

I spent some reading about this today. It was interesting but not important. It sounded too much like whining to me. Writing valid XHTML is not that hard for what I do so I write code that validates. My general feeling is I like the web pages I develop to work in most browsers and have the nice features that make web browsing fun. As an example I recently modified the design for Legacy Farm to:

  1. Simplify the navigation menu.
  2. Make it compatible with Netscape 4.75 and the other non-CSS browsers like it.
  3. Make the pages XHTML 1.0 compliant.

Simplifying the navigation menu and fixing the CSS to work with non-CSS browsers were my major issues. I was afraid of losing potential customers. XHTML was a minor issue for me since customers cannot tell the difference and HTML Tidy did most of the work. I get this warm, fuzzy feeling that by writing valid XHTML code my web pages will be usable in most browsers and I will already be on the most likely path for future standards.