(X)HTML standards

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Jozef Baum	Thursday 04 February 2010 4:30:07 pm (X)HTML is definitely not rocket science. One day, Marc Andreessen, with the Netscape browser, had the bad idea to tremendously extend the browser's software, so that it could eat almost whatever badly coded HTML. Microsoft has even gone much further with its Internet Explorer: it renders most incorrect (X)HTML correctly, while poorly interpreting correctly written (X)HTML (the link element from HTML 1.0 is still missing) and CSS (see the many IE-hacks in a framework such as www.yaml.de). The W3C has done bad work. HTML 2.0 lagged behind the reality at that time, and so did HTML 3.0. HTML 3.2 was an accident, as it tried to include formatting attributes into HTML, for wich this language was not meant. XHTML 2.0 was an error, and therefore replaced by HTML and XHTML 5. eZ Publish goes for XHTML 1.0 Transitional, which allows for all the deprecated tags and attributes in previous HTML versions. For a new website, you shoud use XHTML 1.0 Strict, not XHTML 1.0 Transitional. But even then, with validome.org, the home page of eZ Publish still doesn't validate with XHTML Transitional. This rises the question about how serious eZ Systems is about web standards, knowing that they become increasingly important, due to the multiplication of the user agents. I feel this does not show any commitment from the side of eZ Systems to the web standards. A very much lower scaled CMS, TYPOlight, offers the user the choice between XHTML Strict and Transitional. And if you choose for XHTML 1.0 Strict, it really generates XHMTL 1.0 Strict compliant web pages. To me, it is strange that website developers, who can write 100% correct programs in PHP and JavaScript (as otherwise, they just don't work), don't care about writing standard conform (X)HTML. This goes very far. For example, look at the source code of www.nationalgeographics.fr, which eZ Systems mentions as one of it references: the page even doesn't have a DOCTYPE declaration. Many people tell me that they are not concerned about (X)HTML standards, but only about the final look of their webpages in various browsers. Do you feel this is a sane attitude? Or do you feel, we should first of all conform to the (X)HTML standards, and only then adopt our web pages to the way we want them to show up in each browser?

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Thursday 04 February 2010 4:30:07 pm

(X)HTML is definitely not rocket science.

One day, Marc Andreessen, with the Netscape browser, had the bad idea to tremendously extend the browser's software, so that it could eat almost whatever badly coded HTML.

Microsoft has even gone much further with its Internet Explorer: it renders most incorrect (X)HTML correctly, while poorly interpreting correctly written (X)HTML (the link element from HTML 1.0 is still missing) and CSS (see the many IE-hacks in a framework such as www.yaml.de).

The W3C has done bad work. HTML 2.0 lagged behind the reality at that time, and so did HTML 3.0. HTML 3.2 was an accident, as it tried to include formatting attributes into HTML, for wich this language was not meant. XHTML 2.0 was an error, and therefore replaced by HTML and XHTML 5.

eZ Publish goes for XHTML 1.0 Transitional, which allows for all the deprecated tags and attributes in previous HTML versions. For a new website, you shoud use XHTML 1.0 Strict, not XHTML 1.0 Transitional.

But even then, with validome.org, the home page of eZ Publish still doesn't validate with XHTML Transitional.

This rises the question about how serious eZ Systems is about web standards, knowing that they become increasingly important, due to the multiplication of the user agents. I feel this does not show any commitment from the side of eZ Systems to the web standards.

A very much lower scaled CMS, TYPOlight, offers the user the choice between XHTML Strict and Transitional. And if you choose for XHTML 1.0 Strict, it really generates XHMTL 1.0 Strict compliant web pages.

To me, it is strange that website developers, who can write 100% correct programs in PHP and JavaScript (as otherwise, they just don't work), don't care about writing standard conform (X)HTML.

This goes very far.

For example, look at the source code of www.nationalgeographics.fr, which eZ Systems mentions as one of it references: the page even doesn't have a DOCTYPE declaration.

Many people tell me that they are not concerned about (X)HTML standards, but only about the final look of their webpages in various browsers.

Do you feel this is a sane attitude? Or do you feel, we should first of all conform to the (X)HTML standards, and only then adopt our web pages to the way we want them to show up in each browser?