Hi,

I am currently designing a web site, and would like to use XHTML 1 Strict because I strongly believe in following standards.

However, I also believe that a good web site should be visible to any potential visitors.

So my question is, am I taking a risk in using strict XHTML? It is my understanding that this will require me to use CSS for all the "beautifying" of the page. Is that true? Will this lead to having many visitors not seeing my site properly or simply seeing the site entirely in plain with no styles?

Thanks.

You could still use tables if you code in XHTML, but if you're going to do it properly, you might as well use CSS.
Most modern browsers support it, all the popular ones do. There are a few slight differences in browser interpretation of CSS but they're easy enough to get around. As for older browsers, some support it, but not very well (for example IE5 supports it, but has a fair amount of problems.) In general, there's very few browsers that you can't cater for with CSS.

I believe in XHTML 1.0 Strict, query strings are restricted, or must appear in a special format. So, no more "?id=500&article=20" stuff on the end of your URLs. Read the spec to get the full details, but whatever it was, for me, I just shrugged and switched to XHTML 1.0 Transitional.

-Tony

I'm with aboyd on using xhtml transitional. I remember having some problems using strict and switched to transitional for some reason. I can't remember what they were.

It's still xhtml. In fact you can use xhtml without actually specifying that you're using it, but you should use the declaration.

I agree too with Minaki. You don't need to use css t be using xhtml, but there are many many other good reasons to be using. The majority of css isn't any harder to learn than xhtml and while you will scratch your head in frustration sometimes over inconsistencies with browsers it's usually not too hard to find a work around.

Most of the browsers with limited support for css are mostly not being used anymore. Some still are, but the overwhelming majority of browsers handle css rather well.