[cpk0]

Ive been going on a XHTML validation binge lately, and then i stopped to think about whether or not a majority of people will be able to support it correctly. Most of the stuff that had to be changed, like img border="0" to a CSS of border:0px seems like it's pretty basic, but what is the estimate of which versions of which browers are fully XHTML compatible. And will all these browesers display things exaclty the same, as they should. I can see netscape not supporting the div tag or something...

[Ludovic Hirlimann]

Originally posted by cpk0:
Ive been going on a XHTML validation binge lately, and then i stopped to think about whether or not a majority of people will be able to support it correctly. Most of the stuff that had to be changed, like img border="0" to a CSS of border:0px seems like it's pretty basic, but what is the estimate of which versions of which browers are fully XHTML compatible. And will all these browesers display things exaclty the same, as they should. I can see netscape not supporting the div tag or something...

I prersonnamy try to have a my web pages validated the xhtml standard. Thus people using non compliant browsers will report to the developer of the browser the problem.
All browser do not display valid page the same way ?

[cpk0]

Was that last part there another question, or were you confirming that they do all render the pages the same way. I like that idea of forcing dev.s to make xhtml complient browsers though

[cpk0]

Through my various validation tests, ive yet to find an acceptable place for an image map... Have these been phased out of xhtml entirely? Do they just expect us to splice images now and use positioning to get it the way we want?

[ism]

XHTML isn't different enough from HTML to prevent browsers from rendering it. The main problem is with the CSS.

Check these resources for CSS compatibility:

webreview

westciv

I personally haven't noticed any problems with naff browsers such as netscape 4.x rendering XHTML structure, although of course it does have CSS limitations.

However, DO NOT expect all browsers to render things the same way. You shouldn't aim to develop pixel perfect pages. I.e. design for the web not print. This doesn't mean that you can't get pages to display near enough the same in different browsers though.

It really depends on what browsers you are expecting to view your sites. netscape 4.x really isn't used much so you can just ensure your pages are readable but unstyled for netscape 4.x users. Being a mac user, you maybe expecting mac visitors, and omniweb has very poor css support, so the only thing you can do here is a lot of testing.

For some good practical advice on css, I suggest joining the css-discuss mailing list at:

CSS-DISCUSS

[ism]

Originally posted by cpk0:
Through my various validation tests, ive yet to find an acceptable place for an image map... Have these been phased out of xhtml entirely? Do they just expect us to splice images now and use positioning to get it the way we want?

They are still there. You have to use the object element. Refer to:

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/struct/objects.html#h-13.6

You'll notice that this is in the HTML4.01 Spec, don't worry, XHTML is basically HTML4.01, just with stricter on mark-up.

[Ludovic Hirlimann]

Originally posted by cpk0:
Was that last part there another question, or were you confirming that they do all render the pages the same way. I like that idea of forcing dev.s to make xhtml complient browsers though

Sorry for the ? I meant to writte a !.

[hyperizer]

I've heard some older browsers don't like the slash you have to add to empty tags. You can appease them by adding a space. For example, use <br /> instead of <br/>. Also, you'll probably want to leave out the optional XML prologue at the top of the page (<?xml version="1.0"?&gt. Otherwise you shouldn't have any problems. A List Apart's "Better Living Through XHTML" is a pretty good introduction, as is the NYPL Style Guide's XML Guidelines. Both are by Zeldman.

[Agent69]

Thanks for mentioning A List Apart. I only recently discovered that website and it is awesome.

As for XHTML: In my opinion, it is the way to go. If you are really concerned with compatability, I would suggest XHTML 1.0 transitive, which is really just HTML 4.

I current use XHTML-Basic and CSS. I like using this because I agree with the goals of trying to separate content from presentation, which is what CSS tries to do. When I view my pages in Lynx, a text only browser, all the content is still available.