XHTML Basic 1.1

[jamesicus]

With the increasing emphasis on designing Web pages specifically for Mobile/Small screen rendering it may be a good time to visit and peruse W3C XHTML Basic 1.1 (July 2008 Recommendation). Also, the W3C mobileOK Checker (Check a Web Page for mobile-friendliness) is worth a visit -- its use can be quite enlightening!

JFP

[RyanReese]

Hi

Not a bad mobile checker. But I don't like how it takes points off if you don't have an XHTML Basic DTD. <_<

Cheers.

[zcorpan]

mobileOK guidelines are a bit weird.

Mobiles support text/html (and often actually treat XHTML as if it were text/html), so you could well use HTML if you want.

They ban usage of PNG despite most browsers supporting it fine.

They don't ban usage of XML 1.1 despite most browsers not supporting it.

Also, there's no need to limit the number of elements you can use, just make sure to use features in a way that degrades nicely in browsers that don't support the given feature.

[Dan Schulz]

Yeah, they are weird, especially for the reasons you gave. Thanks, Simon.

[jamesicus]

mobileOK guidelines are a bit weird ..........

You are being nicely charitable! I have found that my own Web pages render quite well in small screen rendering mode (FF and Opera) and on "real life" hand-held (Mobile) device screens. I have designed my pages with this in mind.


"It is the quality and usefulness of the content and the ease of navigation through it that are of the greatest importance to most web page users"

JFP

[mmj]

XHTML Basic was a nice idea in theory, but was a fail in my opinion. It can't be served to regular browsers (well, as least not Internet Explorer, for example), and unlike when XHTML Basic was first conceived, common tag-soup-HTML is now well supported on current generation mobile devices. XHTML Basic may do all right, though, if you're prepared to create different versions for different user agents, possible mixed in with a bit of XSLT on the server-side. As for me, I prefer going with the highest common subset, which is pretty much HTML4.