Thoughts on Bulletproof XHTML

September 03, 2003 | 1 Comments

Evan Goer brings up some really interesting points in his great and thought provoking article, Bulletproof XHTML. Yet another in Dave’s great series, A Second Voice.

I think the decision on whether to go with XHTML of HTML really depends on the situation. Down at the hospital I find it very important to go with XHTML for our content, while at the same time I’m not quite as worried with the layout.

The layout has a relatively short life-span, much of that content will, and has, lived quite a long time. I see so many benefits of going with XHTML (and thus XML) that lie beyond the browser that I feel it would be best to try my hardest to “bulletproof” that content.

Well that, and I live with the mess that is non-standard HTML filled with presentational tags every day. I would save myself, or those that come along after me, that headache. But this can be a costly decision to say the least. Legacy code is usually a nightmare.

Evan mentions the undeniable fact that the homepage on many sites validates, yet the content pages do not. I’m sure that is true, but for myself (professionally at least) I do my best to make sure the content is marked up with valid XHTML and then I worry about the templates and presentational elements. I find the benefit to be greater and most times it’s not difficult.

With my blog and various other sites, I don’t fell as compelled to do this, but I still do what I can. There are times when I come across a sticky piece of content that just begs to be cleaned up, but I find, for whatever reason, it’s just not practical to do so. Some features just won’t validate, and I acknowledge them and move on.

A complicated invalid table for instance or a page with so much inline formatting it would be a nightmare to clean. I mark those for future reference and get to something more realistic to tackle, there is only so much one can do in a day and I spend way to much time cleaning code as it is.

This brings me back to the whole concept of practical use of Web standards and the fact that for every Web project you need to have solid goals and a plan. There are times, like Evan points out, that you might not need to go with XHTML as there would be no real benefit. Choosing your flavor of markup (or any other technology) needs to be weighed against the goals of your project.

Filed under: Web Development