Which is best to strive for when creating a page/website? Is it best to use XHTML 1.1? If so, why, and if not why not?

And what are your thoughts on using XHTML 1.0 Transitional? And then your thoughts on XHTML 1.0 Strict?

I look at it like this: code to the highest standard available for future-proofing reasons, and to ensure that your code is...well, coded to the highest standard available.

Having said that, I generally prefer XHTML 1.0 Strict.

Originally Posted by ADAM Web Design

I look at it like this: code to the highest standard available for future-proofing reasons, and to ensure that your code is...well, coded to the highest standard available.

Having said that, I generally prefer XHTML 1.0 Strict.

That's not really a contradiction at all. Whenever I've attempted coding to XHTML 1.0 Strict (only once or twice ever really), I get errors. I should really get into it more and I'd notice these thigns a lot better. I generally tend to work with XHTML 1.0 Transitional as it's just much easier, but I know it's not as "strict" as 1.0 Strict, hence it's name lol

The problem with XHTML 1.1 is that IE doesn't support it at all. XHTML 1.0 Strict is sufficient and many will argue that unless you're serving it as XML then you shouldn't use even that - but stick to HTML 4.01 Strict.

Whym.. there are a few more rules to XHTML Strict, sounds like you haven't absorbed all of them yet

Nope I don't think I have

http://webstandardsgroup.org/features/tommy-olsson.cfm
No. 4

i tend to use XHTML 1.0 Strict, or traditional i didnt know 1.1 isnt supported.

God i guess i must be because you do it as a job that you know all this LNR @_@

Dan

That was my logic to avoiding XHTML 1.1...different browsers support things differently. I never got into whether IE supports it vs. Firefox vs. Opera vs. Bob's Browser because quite frankly, I think the whole thing is silly and that they're all wrong.

i hate it it just winds me up, how you can make a site which looks GREAT in one browser ver and you look at another version or browser and it can look terrible. and the code can be perfectly validite and up to date etc.

Dan

I enjoy using Bob's browser most though, even if it does cause pain to web developers and web designers - Bob's browser gets my vote. I often think how intelligent Bob was...

XHTML 1.1 is basically 1.0 strict. You could call it XHTML 1.0 extra-strict if you wanted. It adds nothing useful to 1.0 strict, and offers little progression in HTML or XHTML. (A common W3C theme recently) I think its main focus was to enforce XHTML being sent as the mime-type application/xhtml+xml instead of text/html. Because of that, it's harder to validate, and a page that might validate on your server may not validate on someone else's server.

One of the goals of the W3C for a quite a long time now is to separate content from presentation. This started all the way back when CSS was created and that goal was included in the HTML 4 recommendation with the HTML 4 strict dtd. The HTML 4 loose dtd was included because many browsers did not yet support many of the CSS properties which would eventually deprecate some HTML elements and attributes. When the XHTML 1.0 recommendation was released later on, the transitional dtd was included for the same reason: many browsers still did not support certain CSS features. Web designers were encouraged to use the strict dtds if they could, and to use the the transitional dtds only if necessary.

At this point, it's 2007, and browsers are doing much better in terms of standards support. It's rarely necessary to have to use a transitional dtd now. For the few commonly used browsers which still have significant issues (namely IE6), a designer can usually find a workaround which will still allow a page to be XHTML 1.0 strict.

I recommend XHTML 1.0 strict, because XHTML 1.1 is stupid, and XHTML 1.0 transitional really only exists because browsers were much worse with standards than they are now.

Why doesnt Microsoft (and the like) upgrade the engines for their browsers so users/companies/organisations etc can keep a broswer (IE6) but the engine gets upgraded so its mroe compat etc etc

Originally Posted by whym

I enjoy using Bob's browser most though, even if it does cause pain to web developers and web designers - Bob's browser gets my vote. I often think how intelligent Bob was...

Oh yeah? YEAH? Well if Bob were so smart, how come he killed himself by trying to bungee jump without the cord?

hey thats not fair! he had cord it was INVISIBLE!!!

Thank you very much for all of the responses! I really appreciate it, and I think for now I will try and use XHTML 1.0 Strict.

Great glad we could help!