[WEB4LIB] Re: Moving from HTML4.01 to XML

[Thomas Dowling]

Stephen_Francoeur at baruch.cuny.edu wrote:

>It's funny that this question should come up in my inbox just as I was 
>working on the coding standards section of a RFP for the redesign for our 
>library's website. We're considering moving to xHTML as well. To be 
>honest, I'm somewhat in the dark about what it all means, as I have no 
>expertise on the topic. But I do know that as part of the redesign of the 
>New York Public Library website, a great style guide was created with 
>sections on xHTML and its value. Here's the link to that guide:
>
>http://www.nypl.org/styleguide/
>
>Stephen Francoeur
>
>  
>

I think there were some good points made in a recent thread on the 
relative merits of moving from HTML 4.01 Transitional to XHTML 1.0 
Transitional, vs. moving from HTML 4.01 Transitional to HTML 4.01 
Strict.  IMO, the move to XHTML is only worthwhile if you just want to 
play around with XHTML or if you're working with XML editing tools.  
Moving from Strict to Transitional enforces clean, structured markup.

Assuming you have Internet Explorer users you want to support, you'll 
still need to serve up XHTML documents with a MIME type of text/html, 
which means more adept browsers won't be able to get any benefit from 
the change in markup.


-- 
Thomas Dowling
tdowling at ohiolink.edu