Views on XHTML 1.1 site

S

Steve Pugh

Please can you let me know what you think of the site. Its the first time I
have used XHTML 1.1 and cuss seems to be hanging together.

http://users.aber.ac.uk/jap6
Click to expand...

It's served as text/html so it's not proper XHTML 1.1. If it was
served properly then IE wouldn't be able to display it. In other
words, theres' no practical way to use XHTML 1.1 correctly on the web.
And virtually no practical reason why you would want to.

Steve
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

Scripsit Steve Pugh:
It's served as text/html so it's not proper XHTML 1.1. If it was
served properly then IE wouldn't be able to display it. In other
words, theres' no practical way to use XHTML 1.1 correctly on the web.
And virtually no practical reason why you would want to.
Click to expand...

But the W3C makes a big noise about it! :) See http://www.w3.org main page
right now. They have created a working draft for XHTML 1.1 Second Edition.

Since XHTML 1.1 was an exercise in futility, I lack words to describe this
madness. They don't tell what they changed, but probably the dark orange
areas a indicate changes. They make a record in bogosity by including text
in dark red on dark orange background.

Regarding the page about which feedback was requested, it once again
confirms the principle that "Valid HTML!" icons and relatives are much worse
than useless and quite often simply incorrect (and sometimes blatant lies).
Clicking on the icon shows a message "This page is not Valid XHTML 1.1!".

This time, it's actually an easy-to-fix error: instead of wrapping <h3>
inside <a>, which is invalid (<a> is text level, <h3> is block level), you
can nest them the other way around,
<h3><a ...>...</a></h3>
(Using <h3> is semantically wrong, or at least questionable, since the page
has just two levels of headings - they should thus be <h1> and <h2>, not
<h2> and <h3>.)
 
T

Toby A Inkster

David said:
Which says that XHTML 1.1 SHOULD be served as text/html... and
references a document which says it SHOULD NOT be served as text/html to
support that.
Click to expand...

The other major change is that it adds a Schema to validate your X(HT)ML
against. All XHTML 1.1 documents must continue to carry a DOCTYPE though,
and conform to the DTD.

Overall, I think I am *for* allowing XHTML 1.1 to be served as text/html,
provided it meets the compatibility guidelines in XHTML 1.0 Appendix C.

David, on your web page you write:

| Additionally, as far as I know, nothing added in XHTML 1.1 (i.e. Ruby
| annotation) is supported by legacy user agents. So there seems little
| point in allowing it to be served as text/html.

As it happens, Ruby annotation is *only* supported by Internet Explorer
5.0+ for both Windows and Macintosh -- precisely the sort of browsers that
benefit from allowing XHTML 1.1 to be served as text/html.

(With a bit of CSS trickery, you can fake Ruby support in other browsers.)

Yes, it would be nice if Internet Explorer supported XHTML properly, and
sending it as application/xhtml+xml serves as a useful stick to beat
Microsoft with, to encourage them to add proper XHTML support to their
browser.

You could argue that sending XHTML as text/html prevents you from taking
advantage of browsers' stricter parsing methods. But browser makers are
free to apply these strict parsing methods to XHTML documents served as
text/html -- there is *nothing* in any specification that even suggests
that they should not.

Allowing XHTML 1.1 to be served as text/html *finally* gives the CJK
community a standards-compliant way of serving ruby annotated text to a
user agent that supports ruby annotated text.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact
Geek of ~ HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python*/Apache/Linux

* = I'm getting there!
 
C

cwdjrxyz

Please can you let me know what you think of the site. Its the first time I
have used XHTML 1.1 and cuss seems to be hanging together.

http://users.aber.ac.uk/jap6
Click to expand...

There are 3 validation errors when checked as xhtml 1.1 at the W3C
html validator. The page is not served as html which is application/
xhtml+xml and not text/html as served. Thus the page as served is just
html. If it were properly served as xhtml it would not view on IE. If
served as true xhtml, you will have to put a mime type for xhtml on
the server such as associate the extension .xhtml or.xml with
application/xhtml+xml, since the mime type for html is already taken
as text/html. Then the page served as xhtml will not view on IE. You
must then either work on the header to detect if the page will accept
xhtml at all and automatically rewrite the page from xhtml to html
4.01 strict, using regular expressions and such if xhtml support is
not detected in the header exchange. Or you must write both an xhtml
page for IE and a few older browsers and an xhtml page for modern
browsers including Opera, Firefox, Netscape, Seamonkey, etc. Then an
introduction short html page would allow the user to select the page
to use. Or you could use Microsoft conditional comments to route to
the html page for IE and to the xhtml page for everything else. This
would of course miss a few older browsers. Don't blame the W3C for
this mess. The blame falls on Microsoft with their outmoded IE6
browser which does not support true xhtml, and neither doe their new
IE7! Yet Microsoft likely contributes more funds to the W3C than
anyone else and serves on several of their committees.
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

Scripsit Toby A Inkster:
As it happens, Ruby annotation is *only* supported by Internet
Explorer
5.0+ for both Windows and Macintosh -- precisely the sort of browsers
that benefit from allowing XHTML 1.1 to be served as text/html.
Click to expand...

IE has _limited_ Ruby support - to a useful extent, and Ruby can be used
rather safely on the web, since lack of support is not serious (Ruby is
designed to degrade gracefully on non-supporting browsers, provided of
course that authors use Ruby properly); faulty support would be serious.

But this has really nothing to do with XHTML 1.1 or XHTML in general. You
can simply include Ruby markup in a normal HTML markup and have it processed
by IE. Technically, of course, your document won't conform to the HTML 4.01
specification, but that's a formality only. The point is that _support_ to
Ruby does not depend on XHTML.
 
J

j1mb0jay

j1mb0jay said:
Please can you let me know what you think of the site. Its the first
time I have used XHTML 1.1 and cuss seems to be hanging together.

http://users.aber.ac.uk/jap6
Click to expand...
Thank you for the replies you all gave. The reason I am using XHTML 1.1 is
that I have some coursework to do.

The javascript page will be changed i do agree that it looks rather poor.

What decleration should i use rather than text/html to allow for the propper
use of the required document type.
 
A

Andy Dingley

What decleration should i use rather than text/html to allow
Click to expand...

You should use a content-type of text/html, because anything else
breaks IE. The only viable alternative is to serve it dynamically,
according to what each browser claims to accept. Now you're having to
look at dynamic features for what should only need to be a simple
static site.

The doctype you use is probably best as HTML 4.01 Strict, but you
could use XHTML 1.0 Strict reasonably and validly (if not usefully).
What you can't do is to serve XHTML 1.1 by the same simple route.

If your course requires XHTML 1.1, then change course. They're
clueless and their teaching is untrustworthy.
 
J

j1mb0jay

Andy said:
You should use a content-type of text/html, because anything else
breaks IE. The only viable alternative is to serve it dynamically,
according to what each browser claims to accept. Now you're having to
look at dynamic features for what should only need to be a simple
static site.

The doctype you use is probably best as HTML 4.01 Strict, but you
could use XHTML 1.0 Strict reasonably and validly (if not usefully).
What you can't do is to serve XHTML 1.1 by the same simple route.

If your course requires XHTML 1.1, then change course. They're
clueless and their teaching is untrustworthy.
Click to expand...

I paid a lot of money for this course. I am not going to chance. If they
think 1.1 is a good way to start learning HTML with closing every tag and
using CSS, then i have to aggree.
Not my fault browers dont follow rules.
 
A

Andy Dingley

I paid a lot of money for this course. I am not going to chance.
Click to expand...

What is the course?
If they think 1.1 is a good way to start learning HTML
Click to expand...

Then they'd still be wrong. Exactly how much do you think you have to
pay someone before "clueless" miraculously becomes "right" ?
with closing every tag
Click to expand...

There's another error.

I'm sure they didn't teach that, and hopefully that's not even what
you meant, but if you can still post such a comment without realising
how glaringly wrong it is, then they're failing to teach you the
fundamentals.
 
N

Nikita the Spider

"j1mb0jay said:
I paid a lot of money for this course. I am not going to chance. If they
think 1.1 is a good way to start learning HTML with closing every tag and
using CSS, then i have to aggree.
Click to expand...

Hi JJ,
PMFJI. Personally, I agree with the advice that HTML 4.01 Strict is,
with rare exceptions, still the best choice for new Web pages. XHTML is
difficult to use (as has been discussed here and elsewhere) while it
benefits very few Web authors. I also agree that if your teacher has
told you to use XHTML 1.1 in your course, then life will be a whole lot
easier for you if that's what you use. You can hardly go into the class
and say "I'm going to disregard your instructions because some people on
the Internet said you're wrong." But someday (IMHO) you'll do well to
learn the difference between HTML and XHTML and why we disagree with
your teacher. Just reading the discussions of the two in this newsgroup
and comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html will shed a lot of light on the
situation.
Not my fault browers dont follow rules.
Click to expand...

True! And if your interest in (X)HTML is purely academic, then you can
ignore the consequences of browsers' disregard of standards. But if you
have a practical interest in (X)HTML (e.g. you want to get a job as a
Web Geek) then that kind of thinking will only get you as far as the
unemployment line.

Good luck with the course
 
A

Andy Dingley

I also agree that if your teacher has
told you to use XHTML 1.1 in your course, then life will be a whole lot
easier for you if that's what you use.
Click to expand...

I disagree. The _course_ will be easier, and that might well be enough
reason to do just that. However it's still not a useful thing to be
taught and one day you have to face the real world (or else get
tenure!)
 
J

j1mb0jay

UWA(see mail header) Master's Computer Science - AI (I'm in 1st Year) sadly
the goverments state the cost of this is £3,000 per year (4 year course)
Hi JJ,
PMFJI. Personally, I agree with the advice that HTML 4.01 Strict is,
with rare exceptions, still the best choice for new Web pages. XHTML
is difficult to use (as has been discussed here and elsewhere) while
it benefits very few Web authors.
Click to expand...

I feel the only reason it dosn't benift people is because brower's don't
"like" to follow the standards.
I also agree that if your teacher
has told you to use XHTML 1.1 in your course, then life will be a
whole lot easier for you if that's what you use. You can hardly go
into the class and say "I'm going to disregard your instructions
because some people on the Internet said you're wrong."
Click to expand...

I agree hint why i made the website in the first place.
But someday
(IMHO) you'll do well to learn the difference between HTML and XHTML
and why we disagree with your teacher. Just reading the discussions
of the two in this newsgroup and comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html
will shed a lot of light on the situation.
Click to expand...

Started reading already....
True! And if your interest in (X)HTML is purely academic, then you can
ignore the consequences of browsers' disregard of standards. But if
you have a practical interest in (X)HTML (e.g. you want to get a job
as a Web Geek) then that kind of thinking will only get you as far as
the unemployment line.
Click to expand...

I agree with you, sadly I am not planning on being a webgeek but nowadays
can programs really afford not to have some kind of web output. Although
shh/telnet(puTTy) solve alot of "my" problems.
I belive AI is the way forward.
Good luck with the course
Click to expand...

Thank you very much.
 
N

Nikita the Spider

"Andy Dingley said:
I disagree. The _course_ will be easier, and that might well be enough
reason to do just that. However it's still not a useful thing to be
taught and one day you have to face the real world (or else get
tenure!)
Click to expand...

Hi Andy,
I thought I was clear but I guess I wasn't. =) I hope the OP understood
that I meant "life at the moment" (i.e. the OP's course) rather than the
rest of his Web authoring life.
 
J

j1mb0jay

Steve said:
It's served as text/html so it's not proper XHTML 1.1. If it was
served properly then IE wouldn't be able to display it. In other
words, theres' no practical way to use XHTML 1.1 correctly on the web.
And virtually no practical reason why you would want to.
Click to expand...

Say if I was writing XHTML to go to my own browser, which read XHTML fine??
 
J

j1mb0jay

Jukka said:
Scripsit Steve Pugh:


But the W3C makes a big noise about it! :) See http://www.w3.org
main page right now. They have created a working draft for XHTML 1.1
Second Edition.
Since XHTML 1.1 was an exercise in futility, I lack words to describe
this madness. They don't tell what they changed, but probably the
dark orange areas a indicate changes. They make a record in bogosity
by including text in dark red on dark orange background.

Regarding the page about which feedback was requested, it once again
confirms the principle that "Valid HTML!" icons and relatives are
much worse than useless and quite often simply incorrect (and
sometimes blatant lies). Clicking on the icon shows a message "This
page is not Valid XHTML 1.1!".
This time, it's actually an easy-to-fix error: instead of wrapping
<h3> inside <a>, which is invalid (<a> is text level, <h3> is block
level), you can nest them the other way around,
<h3><a ...>...</a></h3>
(Using <h3> is semantically wrong, or at least questionable, since
the page has just two levels of headings - they should thus be <h1>
and <h2>, not <h2> and <h3>.)
Click to expand...

Thank you for this information, do you suggest any other site or "API's" to
read rather than W3C (this was the suggested site to use for the course)
 

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