New Release: Build Your Own Web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS

[Timbothecat]

We disagreed about something? Not sure what. And yeah my post above was supposed to be agreeing with you, that it would be a nice textbook : )

No Stomme, you misunderstood my post. My teachers and I agreed to disagree on the benefits of teaching html and css simultaneously. You and I were in full agreement on the benefits of the aforementioned book.

Even if your page was a moot point, you learned on it, right? So, still good. : )

Yeah, spot on. Actually, I designed it using css tables (after purchasing and reading "everything you know about css is wrong"). I don't get any marks in the assignment for using css3 -not that I expected to, we weren't supposed to be using css at all at this stage- but I took it as an opportunity to try something different. The site itself wasn't moot mind you. It's based on my wifes cake decorating and if she ever moves in to business for herself, she already has a website ready and waiting.

So anyway Stomme, sorry for the misunderstanding. I should have been clearer in my explanation.

Also, Tommy... Thanks for your reply to my question. I knew the X in AJAX had to do with XML, so I just wanted to ask the question. Your answer has cleared things up nicely.

All the best,

Tim.

[AutisticCuckoo]

Also, Tommy... Thanks for your reply to my question. I knew the X in AJAX had to do with XML, so I just wanted to ask the question.

Yes, that's because ajax calls usually retrieve an XML document dynamically from the server, via XMLHttpRequest. But it doesn't have to be XML. Nowadays it's quite common to retrieve data as JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), for instance.

Once the information has been retrieve – whether it's XML, HTML, JSON, plain text or whatever – it is usually used to update the current web page (HTML or XHTML, doesn't matter), e.g., via DOM methods.

[Timbothecat]

So, does this mean there is absolutely no benefit to using xhtml then? I've been using it (xhtml 1.1 Strict that is) because it forces me to use the proper tags etc. If that's the only reason for using it, am I then doing myself a dis-service?

[atetlaw]

So, does this mean there is absolutely no benefit to using xhtml then? I've been using it (xhtml 1.1 Strict that is) because it forces me to use the proper tags etc. If that's the only reason for using it, am I then doing myself a dis-service?

With the death of XHTML 2 it certainly looks that way!

[felgall]

The benefit to using XHTML is the same as it has always been. It is a version of XML and therefore easily created from your XML source using XSLT.

The rapid growth of XML based markup languages for all sorts of things - including RSS, MS Office documents, etc means that one document source that is XML based can be readily converted to any other XML based document format (such as XHTML) simply by setting up an appropriate XSLT to do the conversion.

The web appears to be abandoning XML just at the time when all other documents have embraced it.

Anyway if IE9 is based on a different rendering engine (as has been suggested) then it probably will have support for XHTML 1.0 at least which will allow that to then totally replace all HTML formats for any serious cross platform use.

[AutisticCuckoo]

So, does this mean there is absolutely no benefit to using xhtml then?

There is no benefit unless you need to mix in elements from other XML namespaces. For instance, if you use a lot of equations you might want to use MathML within your XHTML document. Or perhaps an SVG vector image embedded into the document.

But since IE doesn't support XHTML (and using other namespaces requires you to serve it as real XHTML, not as HTML), this would only be of interest to niche sites.

For most people using real XHTML would only have drawbacks. The slightest well-formedness error, like an omitted </p> tag or a single unescaped ampersand in a URL, would result in an error message instead of rendering the page. Unless you have a good CMS that ensures well-formed output, or a strict publishing procedure where you can validate every page before making it public, this will just be a big headache. (Spoke from experience.)