[WEB4LIB] What's next after HTML?

[Chris Gray]

The current W3C standard is XHTML 1.0 which was meant to supercede HTML
4.01.  (Essentially, XHTML 1.0 _is_ HTML 4.01, with a few syntactical
tweaks to make it XML conformant.)  Forward looking Web sites should be
built using XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS.  Strict mainly means that the tags
and attributes that CSS is supposed to render unnecessary are disallowed
not merely deprecated.

I think we are still at a stage where everyone has to do their own
cost/benefit analysis of re-tooling their legacy Web site for forward
looking standards.  In the meantime, the more you can do to make new Web
development standard compliant, the less you will have to re-tool it in the
future.  One aim of XML, XHTML, and CSS (among others) is to save people
the work of constantly having to re-tool their sites.

Another point worth thinking about is that using XHTML and CSS and
validating pages don't guaranty that you'll reap all the potential
benefits of XHTML and CSS.  You have to use them well.  An excellent
introduction to this is the Steve Champeon's article on "The Secret Life
of Markup" <http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/02/42/index4a.html>.

He is a co-author of "Cascading Style Sheets: Separating Content and
Style"
<http://www.glasshaus.com/bookInfo.asp?token=476832ZYeSH2X2hrMU1kY2DIgZ&bookId=59>
which is one of the finest books on Web development I've ever read.  It
will impress you with just how much work might be involved in re-tooling
an existing site for CSS.

Chris

P.S. I'd also recommend Edward Tenner's "Why Things Bite Back".

"general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be
liberal in what you accept from others."  --Jon Postel, 1980, RFC 761, TCP