Bomb.org.uk

01.10.2004 XHTMHELL

Goddamit… why is it every time I copy some text off another website it screws up the XHTML validation for my page? The text from the picture meme was filled with odd little non standard comma characters which all failed the validation and I had to go and change them all the regular commas. Perhaps one day all of the web will be a copy and paste safe zone, but until then… I must remember to check text over before I post it! I bet you guys are all sat there thinking xhtml? phooey! Well don't. HTML is on the way out and XHTML is here to stay for the foreseeable future. Add a little X(ML) factor to your code and you can ensure that your site will be future proof.

Well… that's the argument that the web design pros are offering, but in all honesty I can't really see any web browser ever *completly* removing support for standard html from their browsers. Sure they won't render crappy sites as well as they do now, but you can be pretty sure they'll still render all versions of HTML. Why? Because there are thousands of historic pages on the net that are all rendered in old versions of HTML, most of which won't have any kind of doctype. If the browser makers remove support for normal HTML then they'll essentially be throwing a huge chunk of the internet into the trash and that would be a very stupid mistake indeed.

By the way… I'm not “anti-standards” or anything daft like that in fact I'm totally for standards but I think a lot of people are going over the top and getting obsessed with the whole “every website should be completly standards compliant” argument. It's not going to happen. Too many websites are maintained by amateurs, for instance as a web designer I have clients that want to update their sites themselves.

I can make the original site standards compliant but I can't ensure they use & instead of & and theres no way I have the time to explain the ins and outs of XHTML markup or go in everytime they make a mistake and correct it. Of course a CMS (Content Management System) can get round it by outputting compliant code but if the customer doesn't want to pay for it, what more can I do?