I do plan on continuing my “series” of… well.. whatever it is I’m posting about. But there’s stuff going on that’s keeping me busy. Part of it is real-world job stuff. Part of it is being a Red Sox and Patriots fan and part of it is that I’m looking at moving this site to a new server.
I’m also re-thinking my whole approach to using XHTML. In the past I had ignored the simple requirement of XHTML, which is that XHTML documents should not be sent under the text/html mime-type. I felt it was worth ignoring that bit because I wanted to focus on the future of HTML document structure while keeping backwards compatible with older web browsers. XHTML 1.0 transitional allows this, but I’ve been mucking around with XHTML 1.0 strict and XHTML 1.1 for a while now, and both do not want the text/html mime-type.
Now ignoring the mime-type issue hasn’t been a problem before, why bother caring about it now?
Simple answer being how can I push one standard (CSS) while breaking another?
Of course I break CSS intentionally for the sake of compatibility with IE via various comment hacks and proprietary CSS attributes. So if I’m willing to break CSS standards, then it should be okay to break XHTML as well?
It’s a screwy, grey area.
I break CSS because I need to for the sake of users. However I don’t have to break the XHTML standard for the sake of user experience. And perhaps that small but important distinction is why I’m thinking I need to put more focus on my choice of (x)html flavor.
Anyone care to share their own thoughts on this?