Re: OT: Defending HTML4

People said, so I decided to reply:

> Axiem> Ah, okay. So basically, everything I've noted about HTML4 is
XHTML1,
> Axiem> basically. I thought the all-lowercase and the marking empty tags
was
> Axiem> part of HTML4?
>
> Nope.  The semantic changes you noted - deprecating the visual tags in
> favor of CSS, etc. - that's HTML4.  But HTML4 is still case-insensitive
> and allows unmarked empty tags.
Ah. I was under the impression it didn't. Or at least, it was strongly
encouraged to be all-lowercase and so on.

So basically: HTML -> HTML4+CSS -> XHTML1+CSS

Where each -> represents changes in semantics and/or nature (for lack of a
better word) of the language.

>
> Axiem> Agreed. It would be nice if "checked", "true", "yes", and/or
> Axiem> "on" all worked. That is, allow for synonyms.
>
> I would be happy if they'd just picked one and used it everywhere.  In
> case it's not clear, the way it works now, the value has to be equal
> to the attribute name.  So you say checked="checked", but
> selected="selected", multiple="multiple", etc.
Oh. Ouch. I haven't looked through the XHTML spec, so I didn't know that.
Indeed, I would also rather they picked one and used it everywhere. Oh well.

So here's the thousand shells question: is it worth learning XHTML1 + CSS at
this point, or is it better to just wait until XHTML2 + CSS comes out and
makes it all nifty (at the risk of breaking IE)?

-Keith

Reply