October 31, 2003
(answer to “I’m Quitting XHTML”)
1/11/2022: This page is old and somewhat outdated; it remains here only for archival purposes.
Two days ago, I announced that I would be converting the site back to HTML 4.01 Strict. In a move reminiscent of the Ummamum/Oo confusion in 2001, I have decided to keep the current 21st Anniversary Edition intact. This page addresses the issues raised by the previous one.
On the previous page I noted that XHTML is not
HTML. Although technically this is true, XHTML
1.0 is designed to work like HTML in existing
browsers. The same elements and attributes are used in both,
and the W3C states
that XHTML
1.0 MAY be sent as text/html to legacy browsers.
Even Hixie states (in
Appendix B of his text document) that it’s OK as long as the
proper MIME
type (application/xhtml+xml) is served to conforming
user agents (browsers), and styling and scripting are set up to work
properly on all user agents. That’s exactly what I am doing now,
and I guess that puts me into the realm of “advanced authors”.
(NOTE: At this writing, Ummamum’s Picture Place
and Petitt’s Creations
are written in XHTML 1.1, which should not
be served as text/html. I plan to remedy this by
switching the DOCTYPE to XHTML 1.0 Strict. At that
time I will also provide limited styling for Netscape 4.)
The W3C’s HTML compatibility guidelines (cited above), under point C.9 (Character Encoding), refer to documents being “served as multiple media types”. It looks like they foresaw this as a possibility and deem it okay too. To answer my cappuccino analogy on the previous page, I am serving black coffee to Internet Explorer, then providing cream and sugar via JavaScript and CSS.
Currently this site uses only scripts that work in both XML and HTML environments, with the exception of special scripts for Internet Explorer and Netscape 4. I tried the greeting script for a couple of days until I learned that it broke on better browsers. I may fix the script and return it to service at a later date. This is a work in progress.
As far as the redundant id and name
attributes are concerned, I have been living with this for over
two years already. Blame it on existing user agents like Netscape
4 and mobile devices that can’t find an element by its
id. In a perfect world, I would write the entire site
in XHTML 1.1, serve it only as application/xhtml+xml
and link only to id attributes within pages. But if
I did that today, 90% of you wouldn’t be able to read this.
The style sheet linking methods are still under consideration.
Rightfully I should use both the ?xml-stylesheet
processing instructions and the <link> tags.
A style switcher script may be in the works. This too is a
work in progress.
I left the reason for my decision until last, because it isn’t
forward compatibility any more. Who knows what the future holds?
It isn’t to use the extensiblity of XML, nor to
mix XML namespaces, like Jacques
Distler has done. My reason is simpler: my site statistics
show that 5% of my hits are coming from Netscape 6 or 7, Mozilla,
Firebird or Phoenix (they are listed separately for some reason),
and those browsers will send an HTTP-ACCEPT header to
the server which indicates that they actually prefer the
MIME type application/xhtml+xml over text/html.
When I tried content negotiation on another server, Netscape 7
and Mozilla received an XHTML page as application/xhtml+xml.
Why not give them what they want, and give the other browsers what
they can handle?
My final word for now is this: do this only if you really know what you are doing. My journey has been a long and difficult one, and the work is still in progress. Most authors are advised to stick with HTML 4.01 until support for XHTML dramatically improves.