I suspect you’re right, it is semantics as I’ve seen a lot of similar DTD XHTML 1.0 as text/html tutorials all over the place.

Also, I’ll be sure to check your blog regularly as I’m sure I could learn a lot from it (I actually found a link to it from a discussion on XHTML vs HTML on the killersites.com forum).

Without really knowing anything about the book’s content, I think you would be fairly safe off using HTML 4.01 Strict. Unless they use any examples that actually requires XML format to work, that is.

Most likely, though, it’s just a matter of semantics since many tutorials use XHTML served as text/html. A great way to learn, however, is to write HTML 4, and then switch it to XHTML (basically by just adding closing slashes on single elements such as img, input etc) and serve it as application/xhtml+XML.

This way you will learn the differences, where things break etc.

I’ve recently started learning how to code a web page and bought a book called ‘Build Your Own web Site The Right Way Using HTML & CSS’, published by sitepoint.

It was recommended to me as being a good text to learn how to code according to W3C standards and to avoid picking up bad habits (which is why I wasn’t recommended one of those Bible/24 hour type books).

However, the author uses DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict and publishes the content as text/html in his examples.

I’ve read a few articles, posts and FAQs including Tommy Olsson’s ‘XHTML vs HTML FAQ’ and I thought that perhaps I should use HTML 4.01 Strict as text/html.

So my question is, can I continue to use this book and just use DTD HTML 4.01 Strict as text/html (as HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 are quite similar from what I understand)?

Sorry for the noob question, but I’m learning a lot!

Damn, you’ve crushed my beliefs I thought it was rather normal myself…

What’s a wet-behind-the-ears youngster like yourself doing on a blog for grown-ups anyway, Robert?
Besides, you’re from Yorkshire, which means you cannot be considered normal in any known sense of the word.

I’m not looking to get in the last word, but I’d like to point out that the HTML5 working group is also creating the next version of XHTML – XHTML5. So no matter if HTML or XHTML will prevail, it will still be a blow to accessibility.

That has nothing to do with HTML vs XHTML. It’s to do with the working group’s disregard for people’s needs and with their incomprehensible decision to base the future markup languages on how earlier versions have been used by people who couldn’t possibly care less about semantics, standards or accessibility.

I personally think that’s a much more important battle to fight than whether or not you should sprinkle a few slashes throughout your markup. At least it seems as if you and I could fight side by side in that battle.

I might, however, consider an adult believing in Santa Clause to be a bit odd.

Damn, you’ve crushed my beliefs I thought it was rather normal myself…

Really it is about time “certain browser vendors” caught-up and started supporting HTML 4.01 correctly.

People haven’t stopped caring it is just that most have tired of flogging a dead horse.

As you’ve probably noticed, I decided not to get too involved in tis discussion. Not that it’s not interesting, but rather that other people say very good things that are about the same as I would.

So, great discussion, and thanks for contributing!

Chrstine,

Thank you!

Robert, maybe you can have a post on “the culture of HTML versus XHTML”. Maybe it can help determine if people who use XHTML try harder. The keyword being: “try”. And if XHTML supporter were in charge of the next markup language, would they take web accessibility more seriously than the HTML5 people? Would XHTML people follow cow paths or make new paths? I think it would make for an interesting discussion.

By the way Robert, I love your photos. You have a lovely family.

It is illegal to conclude XHTML worse than HTML because with HTML it is easier to abuse markup.

That’s true, but only for real XHTML. Pretend-XHTML is nothing but badly written HTML, as far as user agents are concerned, which means it’s just as ‘easy to abuse’ as honest HTML.

In fact I’d say it’s much easier to abuse XHTML (when serving it as text/html) because there will be no feedback from user agents (or the validator) telling you when you make serious mistakes, like using document.write() or assuming an implicit tbody in a table.

As far as a Transitional spec… who cares, what matters if what is happing today. XML may not be the big language everyone always told us it would be. But to write it right, means thousands of broken web sites and writing it wrong today means trying to teach these people to do it right years down the road.

It sounds like you are actually suggesting that we either teach or allow people to write it wrong. Where is the logic of allowing people to do something wrong today based on tomorrow. Will it be easier to teach them to do it right later after years of doing it wrong?

HTML is a current standard and 20 years from now we may not have either language, we do not know. If there is no XHTML language invlved then there is no reason to use XHTML so long as HTML is still a standard. It means nothing if it is HTML 4.01, HTML 5 or HTML 9.

“Long live Python, it will revolutionize the web” - My Python teacher in Potsdam Germany, 2000. In 8 years I have seen 4 Job openings list Python, 3 in Germany and one in the US. Seems to me that XML is not as far as it was expected to be at this point.

Tommy, I bet you’re the kind of guy who enjoys telling children there is no Santa Clause.

You seem very quick to judge someone you’ve never even met, Christine. No, I wouldn’t dream of depriving a child of Santa. I might, however, consider an adult believing in Santa Clause to be a bit odd.

Tommy, you seem to be overly concerned with how the web works today.

You’re not really listening to me, are you, Christine? If you read the ‘XHTML is dead’ article, you’ll see that worries for the future is what it’s all about. People relying on HTML-only practices in their purported XHTML today is making it more and more difficult to switch over to a working, real XHTML tomorrow.

And please stop calling me an XHTML hater. I’m not. I just want people to use it properly.

XML is not suited for web pages. It’s a format for data storage and transmission. The draconian error handling means the author must guarantee well-formedness. In conjunction with ‘Web 2.0′ – user-supplied content – it’s an equation that’s hard to balance, unless today’s authoring tools and CMSs become a lot better.

Every time you and others put down XHTML, you are voting for HTML

The funny thing is that 99.9% of the XHTML proponents aren’t using XHTML at all. They’re using invalid HTML, thinking that they are cooler than the rest. So unless you are serving your pages as application/xhtml+XML, don’t disparage HTML, because that’s what you are using.

Checkpoint 11.1 in WCAG 1.0 says that we should use the latest version of W3C technologies that are supported. For any public-facing website today, and for the foreseeable future, that means HTML 4.01.

Unless you need to mix in elements from another XML namespace, XHTML does not offer anything over HTML. It’s not more semantic and it’s not more strict. It’s only a lot more difficult.

You seem to believe that HTML means tag soup. Valid HTML is just as strict as valid XHTML. The syntax rules are different, but neither one is stricter than the other.

Christine, instead of spreading FUD about how bad HTML is, why don’t you try a little honesty in your XHTML preachings?

Tommy, you seem to be overly concerned with how the web works today. Who cares if today people are writing invalid XHTML and serving it as text/html? Who cares if today people are writing valid XHTML and serving it as application/xhtml+XML? Really, today, who cares?

XHTML 1.x is a transitional spec. Think of it as practice for an XML based web. You, Anne, Ian and other XHTML haters are getting all worked up over something that was always meant to be temporary.

The big picture is what will replace XHTML 1.x and how do we get there. So, what kind of web do you want to have 10 years from now? That is what is important. That is what is worth fighting for. Social and technological change does not happen over night. You need to have a long-term view.

Every time you and others put down XHTML, you are voting for HTML (and the culture around HTML). And W3C is listening. So you helped influence the future direction markup is taking - HTML5. So I am back to my original comment - well done Tommy. But you can sleep well at night because you were “honest” in your teachings.

This is not a rumor. The current draft of HTML5 has the alt attribute optional.

That’s the point: it’s a draft. No-one knows what it will contain when (if?) it becomes a W3C recommendation. And since Microsoft still don’t implement all of HTML4, I think there’s no immediate danger.

Besides, this only applies to people who know enough to validate their markup. If they’re that clued in, there’s a good chance that they’ll understand the importance of text equivalents, too. At least if we keep reminding them.

This is exactly the problem I have with your teachings. You only look at the technical side of things.

When it comes to markup, yes, I do. I don’t think the choice of markup should be emotional. Emotions come into design and into the content, but markup is engineering. Both sides are equally important.

XHTML has a culture around it where people try to write better markup, they try to learn how elements are supposed to be used.

Do you have any objective proof to support that statement, Christine? Because I’ve seen plenty of evidence to the contrary. People believe that XHTML is a new version of HTML and they keep abusing it the way HTML has been (and still is) abused.

When you attack XHTML, you are not attacking the technical merits of XHTML, you are killing the culture around XHTML which is part of the same culture that fueled the Web standards movement and Web accessibility. Please, look at the big picture.

First of all, I’m not ‘attacking’ XHTML at all. If you look at my blog, using an XHTML-compliant browser, you’ll see that I currently use XHTML. That may change if I ever find the time to rewrite the system, but right now it uses silly content negotiation.

What I’m trying to do is to teach people that there is a major difference between HTML and XHTML, so that they don’t believe you can just go on as before after turning of CapsLock and sprinkling a few slashes throughout the markup.

I’m not even saying that it’s bad to write XHTML markup and then serve it as text/html. That’s fine. Pointless (from a technical perspective), but fine. As long as it still works when served as real XHTML! And that’s where 99% of the authors fail, thus writing ‘XHTML’ that must be served and parsed as tag soup.

The reason many people believe that XHTML is synonymous to web standards is because people lie to them and say that XHTML markup is more semantic, more strict and whatnot (without, of course, mentioning a word about MIME types).

I prefer to tell people that you can write equally standards-compliant, strict and accessible markup using HTML 4.01. I also like to tell people that XHTML is far more difficult than they may have been led to believe. Then they can make an informed choice – not one based on lies and propaganda.

Do you think it’s better to keep lying to people and say that XHTML is more semantic or more strict? That it will be parsed faster even if served as text/html? What good will that do anyone?

you don’t really believe that my opinions influence W3C, do you?

Yes, I do. Your opinions influenced hundreds of people who then go on to influences hundreds more. Which then gives fuel to people like Ian and Anne. It’s called the Butterfly Effect.

Tommy wrote:

First of all, the alt attribute is not optional. There are rumours that this stupidity will occur in HTML5

This is not a rumor. The current draft of HTML5 has the alt attribute optional.

Tommy wrote:

but that’s many years into the future.

3 years is not that far away. Browser vendors are already implementing some features in HTML5 while HTML5 is still in draft stage. But once the spec reaches Candidate Recommendation a year from now, it will be very hard to change anything. Here is the schedule:
2008 Q2: Last Call Working Draft
2008 Q3: Candidate Recommendation
2010 Q2: Proposed Recommendation
2010 Q3: Recommendation

Tommy wrote:

And what are the faults in HTML that don’t exist in XHTML?

This is exactly the problem I have with your teachings. You only look at the technical side of things. There is a social side to this that you are missing. XHTML has a culture around it where people try to write better markup, they try to learn how elements are supposed to be used. People try harder when they use XHTML. I can tell you that if the next markup language was called XHTML 1.2 instead of HTML5, then there would not be a debate about the alt attribute.

When you attack XHTML, you are not attacking the technical merits of XHTML, you are killing the culture around XHTML which is part of the same culture that fueled the Web standards movement and Web accessibility. Please, look at the big picture.

Tommy, you and others who criticized XHTML have succeeded in influencing W3C to resurrect HTML, with all its faults.

Christine, you don’t really believe that my opinions influence W3C, do you?

And what are the faults in HTML that don’t exist in XHTML? They are identical, content wise. It’s all a matter of syntax. The only realy difference is that XHTML (real, not pretend) can include elements from other XML namespaces, but the real-world applications of that are scarce since the semantics of those namespaces are unknown to user agents.

Now the alt attribute is optional and a slew of other accessibility features are on the chopping board. This has set accessibility back at least 10 years. Well done!!!

First of all, the alt attribute is not optional. There are rumours that this stupidity will occur in HTML5 (and XHTML5), but that’s many years into the future. In current specs the attribute is required.

Although I think the proposal is extremely stupid, I don’t agree that it will set accessibility back 10 years. Why? Because the alt attribute is required in today’s standards, yet a lot of people omit it. Even worse, most of those who don’t omit it use it incorrectly.

I’ve been practicing accessible web design and development for five years. I’m writing about it on my blog and I’m giving lectures to anyone who wants to listen. I’ve also been very critical against the HTML5 working group because of their disregard for semantics and accessibility. Your saying ‘Well done’ to me for their ignorance doesn’t make sense.

And since XHTML5 is also being developed by the same people, the alt attribute will be optional in the next version of XHTML, too. Well done, Christine.

I will say this, be careful what you wish for. Tommy, you and others who criticized XHTML have succeeded in influencing W3C to resurrect HTML, with all its faults. Now the alt attribute is optional and a slew of other accessibility features are on the chopping board. This has set accessibility back at least 10 years. Well done!!!

Tommy, who elected you sheriff of the Web?

I guess I did come across as élitist and rude after all.

Believe me, I am trying to describe and explain. The ‘XHTML is dead’ article isn’t propaganda – if you read it you will see that it attempts to explain why XHTML will never work as intended and why there is no real point in using it for the large majority of authors.

I’ve written other posts on my blog (and elsewhere) where I try to explain the fundamental differences between HTML and XHTML that many people are unaware of.

I’ve written long posts on SitePoint Forums, like the XHTML vs HTML FAQ, which was actually voted ‘Most Helpful Thread of the Year’ (2006) by the forum members. So I do try to help.

Why don’t I spend even more time on this? In part because I don’t have the time to spend; in part because very few people care to listen.