XHTML - Worth Converting?From Chris Sharkey at Ozstays
on 7 Feb '03
I read a great article yesterday on www.w3schools.com about XHTML
and how it will eventually become a replacement for HTML. To
summarise for those who don't know what XHTML is - it is
essentially a stricter form of HTML which enforces practices like
well-formed XML and proper use of attributes.
In that past my web sites have (and still do) consisted of
terribly sloppy HTML code since I am essentially a programmer and
just dump output in the quickest (and easiest) way I can, so
conforming to standards isn't something I'm accustomed to.
However since converting to using Linux I realise the importance
of standards for people who don't just use Internet Explorer on
Windows XP with a resolution of 1024x768 and a Mickey Mouse mouse
pad.
So as I re-write my code to be faster and to implement my caching
system I am attempting to convert my output to well-formed XHTML.
My questions are;
1/ How important is well formed HTML/XHTML in terms of a search
engine?
2/ Will my sites be penalised because they are in XHTML?
3/ Do you know if XHTML is backwards-compatible with older forms
of Netscape?
4/ Do you believe that browsers will really enforce this standard
in the future?
