Why XHTML is bad

at 13:10 on 01 September 2006, paul haine wrote:

Yeah, but the 'X' makes it sound cool.

at 15:20 on 01 September 2006, Pid wrote:

Amateur.

You should use whichever markup language is best suited to your needs - making sweeping statements like this is not helpful, it's ridiculous, you might as well promote tag soup.

A new generation of browser is being born with better standards compliance and modern capabilities. Your argument would be moot if IE7 had arrived 3 years ago, and xHTML as application/xml+html was widespread.

at 16:50 on 01 September 2006, G3 wrote:

OMG! That's like saying calculas is too hard, so scientists shouldn't have to learn it!

Standards are there for a reason. If everyone created photoshop chop-shop sites and ignored code compliance we would be in a world of trouble!

at 17:18 on 01 September 2006, jlactose wrote:

quite a silly thing to say. we've waited a long long time for standards to be, well, standard.

at 17:22 on 01 September 2006, Adam wrote:

Yeah, let's get thousands of lazy newbies to mess around, instead of thousands of good sites. That's gangsta!

at 17:53 on 01 September 2006, Brian wrote:

Are you kidding me? This statement isn't helpful at all! It's not difficult for a newbie, it teaches them they have to follow rules (or standards). What's bad about that?

at 18:28 on 01 September 2006, Steve wrote:

Can Stylegala please not allow public news posters to put post stuff from their own site? The column as it is now might as well be called "Shameless Self-Promotion." It seems like common sense but apparently common sense escapes a lot of people here.

at 19:12 on 01 September 2006, Maleika E. Attawel wrote:

Why is there such an aggressive reaction towards the article? The person who wrote that article is only one of many who use that logic. There are many who prefer using HTML over XHTML since IE simply cannot handle XHTML, the reason why most people send their XHTML as content = text/html instead of application/xhtml+xml ...

A good article on this issue: http://www.autisticcuckoo.net/archive.php?id=2005/03/14/xhtml-is-dead

I think that both approaches are fine but I don't see why someone using the approach as the initial author needs to get slammed for not wanting to serve XHTML as HTML since XHTML is XML and not HTML. Just my two cheap cents.

:)

at 19:25 on 01 September 2006, Señor Pantalones wrote:

we need a new system for blogging where readers can flag someone's post "WRONG" without the approval of the author. This kind of information is misleading and makes me question stylegala's quality threshold.

at 21:24 on 01 September 2006, Calvin Froedge wrote:

But then again this is an opinion, and it's not fair to silence it just because you may not agree with it. If everyone that posted on this forum was preaching non-standards compliance I'm sure you wouldn't want to have your post disabled just because it was different than everyone elses.

But actually I think this article and post is just a brilliant bit of SEO. The author knew you guys would freak out about this, probably put a link on your blogs about how much of an idiot this guy is, and in turns he gets seo points.

= )

at 21:40 on 01 September 2006, Emil Stenström wrote:

Hi, nice to see your reactions here. I'm sorry for posting my own article, if that's against some rule I'll stay away from it in the future. I surely think the article is relevant to stylegala readers.

Letting someone add an article to the public news does not means it's the opinion of stylegala, so please stop saying it makes stylegala look bad. You might be of a different opinion (comment on the article then) but that has nothing to do with stylegala.

Thanks for reading the whole article Maleika.

at 22:11 on 01 September 2006, David B. wrote:

I aggree , i bet most if not all the people commenting here didnt even read the article, they jsut read the headline decided to act like babies,

mark Donohue said it best:

"As a programmer, I can certainly see arguments for a more rigid standard like XHTML: efficiency, flexibility, extensibility, etc… However, my personal hunch has been that some small part of the motive for XHTML is out of haughty resentment by “programmers” over the loss of web development as the sole domain of the computer elite in the wake of the internet’s popularity in the 90’s. This is their way of taking back the web and drawing a line separating themselves from the rest of the HTML hobbyists: by developing and pushing standards that will finally break their stupid sites and BOLDLY announce, “See? You’re just not skilled enough to make websites. Only WE may do the web. (Insert smug Conan-style dance here.)"

at 23:52 on 01 September 2006, Maleika E. Attawel wrote:

Err ... I read the article which is why I did place a comment, something which I rarely do. But I do believe the article is good because it offers a different perspective with solid arguments in my humble opinion. Which is not to say that I think XHTML is bad. I do think that both XHTML and HTML do have their place on the web (for me, XHTML at a later point in time when we can use SVG and other nifty stuff), given specific tasks.

at 01:55 on 02 September 2006, David B. wrote:

i can appreciate your comments, Maleika, im speaking more to the group of descentors whose bantering have no real relevance to the the discussion, its jsut noise from the sidelines really, when are you going to have intellegent communication.

Maleika, only real relevent comments, intelectually to the point of the article where your yours and pid's minus his 'Amateur' comment. everything else can be thrown out with the wash as far as im concerned. is this an angry post... yes it is, when will the 'kids grow up and start posting meaningful thought provocing comments.

saying "i disagree" can be said in an intellectual manner by refuting his claims through opinion or other tangible articles. but noooo all we get on style gala is sh*& like this http://www.stylegala.com/news/public200609/2168.htm#comment9

at 07:00 on 02 September 2006, Kyle wrote:

I'm not even going to bother reading it, smells funny.

at 12:37 on 02 September 2006, Emil Stenström wrote:

Maleika: Yes, I know you read it, that was why I was thanking you! :) Many of the other comments were talked about in the comments of the post.

Kyle: hahha :)

at 12:41 on 02 September 2006, Andy wrote:

Emil has put effort into his article. It's his opinion and he's entitled to it. If you disagree then simply let him know why instead of plain slating him. Grow up.

at 17:02 on 02 September 2006, G3 wrote:

David B. -

I don't think it takes a thorough reading to know what the article is saying. It is basically the same set of arguments that the web programming community has dealt with since the beggining of the internet. It doesn't take someone of medial intelligence to figure it out.

Valid reasons or not, it still negates the movement towards responsible, intuitive design. Since IE does not properly render css, would you say we should abandon tableless layout? The whole argument should be, "demand that modern browers comply with widely accepted standards," not "since it is too hard to learn, and not supported- we ought to give up." Only recently has IE more fully supported CSS with it's forthcoming IE7, not because they chose to, but because of outcry in the community.

This article can only hinder the advance of the modern browser and divide those who have to deal with it's inner workings on a daily basis. Well written or not is besides the point, We are all responsible

at 20:17 on 02 September 2006, David B. wrote:

'I don't think it takes a thorough reading to know what the article is saying'

That is the most illogical thing i have head yet.Thats akin to saying you will know how well a car drives by mearly sitting in it at the dealership. or viewing the commercials for it on tv.'

besides that, you misunderstood my point, the intelectualness comes in the ability to support or deny the article with solid factual evenidence or persoanl opinion which stays above basic name calling, in all of its forms.

'Valid reasons or not, it still negates the movement towards responsible, intuitive design.'

are you kidding, me? so you are saying that no matter how 'valid' the reasons, this article still only does damage to the community? thats absurd reasoning in my opinion. at worst this article opens the debate and seeks to make a point from a particular point of view. which can then be inteligently argued from the other side.

at 04:54 on 03 September 2006, G3 wrote:

David B.-

No, I am not kidding.

To support the laxing of standards and responsible code does no good for the web and it's authors.

Noobs: "it's too hard to learn." Fine, then don't challenge yourself to learn, and dont bother coding either.

IE: "Most standards not supported, so we give up." What? Get another browser. Microsoft will pay attention and start engineering globally accepted norms instead of awkward propietary protocols and backwards platforms.

at 07:25 on 03 September 2006, David B. wrote:

well, in an effort for this not to go on to much longer, all i will say is that you are pulling those comments out of context. he isnt saying, they are too hard, so dont learn them period, he is saying we should all get the 'standard' sorted out first then it will be easier to step people into learning it, nobody learns thing all at once, we learn bits and peice, small portions then and only then after learning the building blocks can we master the higher level code.

all hes saying is that if we -'we' the people how are guiding what the 'standard' is can stop moving the target, then the 'noobs' have a better chance at learning how to do it right. but thats jsut my humble opnion, I my self use XHTML because i like how it resembles programing and like the challenge of making thedesign beautiful andthe code pretty. but i fully understand the bigger picture he is getting at, and i think thats what people are missing. the 'bigger picture'. which maybe scary for us as designers.

at 07:28 on 03 September 2006, David B. wrote:

... because it means making a standard at various levels of the learning base, which makes the entry level a bit lower and thus easier for 'ametuersto create web presents. but for me its , -insert some other pun for - if you can stand the heat, get out the kitchen.

at 19:22 on 03 September 2006, G3 wrote:

Do websites function the same as they did 10 years ago? No. teachnology constantly changes based on need or desire and will never remain constant. We are all noobs at something or other, because there is a constant dynamic environment that is the web. Just look at ajax and ruby on rails now vs. html1.

Of course, learn the basics first. That ought to go without saying. But to say "various levels of standards" is pointless. There already is. Compliant html, xhtml trans, strict, xml, css, php. There are many different levels of coding that can be compliant, all require different skillsets.

Standards are not just there for the development side, but also the deployment side. Work should be consistently experienced accross the board. Security is another huge factor for the constant evolution of the web. When flaws are found, they are fixed, and the design community reacts accordingly.

Standards will never stop evolving, neither should coder. The base already exists. The article is meri

at 00:04 on 04 September 2006, brent wrote:

I think I'd have less of a problem with this guy's post if he didn't have such a smug look in that pic :P j/k

I think it's a pretty well written article, much better than the pointless/ego inflating "Levels of CSS knowledge". He made some good points and some extremely bad and destructible points. That being said, they are his opinion, and he's entitled to them. And this IS the kind of article that should be on stylegala. It proposes a view on design, and provokes discussion and thoughts that some would have never considered, regardless if he's right or wrong. I think it's pretty closed minded to attack him and propose to have his articles banned from stylegala, instead of digesting the entire article and trying to consider the good in it.

at 00:29 on 04 September 2006, David B wrote:

Well said G3, THAT is the kinda of retropsective comment, and thought, that we need on here in any case. didnt catch that last sentence, but i understand what you are saying. dont agree with you on whether the comment should be read or not, but i understand.

I agree with you 100% Brent. if nothing else, it has sparked the debate, and only good can come of that i believe.

at 06:56 on 04 September 2006, Ben wrote:

So...because something is difficult to learn it shouldn't be considered standard?

Just because you're new to a field doesn't mean you should be held to a lesser standard than the people who have been doing it for a long time.

People who are new to accounting don't get to ignore complicated accounting laws. People new to design shouldn't get to ignore standards.

at 00:18 on 09 September 2006, Emil Stenström wrote:

brent: smug look?! you bastard! :)

at 21:03 on 09 September 2006, vicmackey wrote:

wtf is hard about xhtml? the reason people shouldn't use it is because for 99% of users, it is pointless and simply adds extra bloat to your markup (for no reason). General rule, if you don't know why you're using xhtml, don't use it. If you're not using the "X" portion of XHTML, don't use it.

http://www.hixie.ch/advocacy/xhtml

Stick with html 4.01 strict.

at 19:04 on 14 September 2006, Bad wrote:

xhtml is hard, if you've used it before obviously its easy for you. But to the true beginner its just like another language that has to be learned. It just isn't worth it.

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