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Posted by Simon Shutter on August 31, 2005, 3:41 pm
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Michael,
Thank you for your considered response.
You're right that I'm looking at fixing an old site that has inappropriate
use of HTML tags and has not leveraged CSS. So, an update to HTML/CSS would
solve most problems. I just thought that XHTML would be more accessible.
Having seen that some major corporate sites like chevrolet.com are migrating
to XHTML Strict with CSS for layout, I thought this might be a sign of a
threshold being reached. If, by writing clean HTML, I can automatically
convert to XHTML, then perhaps that is what I should do. But, rightly or
wrongly, I have influenced by alistapart and webstandards org who appear to
advocate XHTML where possible.
With regard to your comment about IE7 and XHTML, the following article
suggests that MS VS Web Developer and ASP.NET 2.0 will support XHTML so I
hope they aren't going to let IE7 languish - that would be embarrassing.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/asp.net/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnaspp/html/aspnetusstan.asp
Simon
> On 31/08/2005 17:14, Simon Shutter wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> > First, from what I understand, one of the advantages of XHTML/CSS is
> > the ability of screen readers/braille agents to provide an improved
> > experience than HTML with table layout.
>
> It isn't the combination of XHTML and CSS that might provide any
> improvement, but rather the use of semantic markup. The markup language
> involved is irrelevant; HTML is just as good as XHTML (better,
> possibly). After all, one can still author bloated documents using
> Transitional XHTML 1.0, and indeed the vast majority of XHTML documents
> probably are written this way (certainly from what I've seen).
>
> There is nothing intrinsically inaccessible about HTML, and even
> table-based layouts can be accessible (but WYSIWYG-authored documents
> rarely will be).
>
> > [...] at what point do you think XHTML/CSS will become the preferred
> > approach?
>
> When the overwhelming majority of user agents support XHTML properly.
> Until then, use HTML with CSS.
>
> > Will it be when the number of IE5.x users drops below the number of
> > users who rely on screen readers/braille agent?
>
> IE5 isn't the issue; IE in general is as no current versions support
> XHTML (and I don't believe IE7 will, either). Poor CSS support is
> usually manageable.
>
> > Second, if one is forced to use HTML with table layout, is there a best
> > practice of coding that facilitates migration to XHTML/CSS [...]
>
> You will undoubtedly be rewriting the markup from scratch, so it isn't a
> concern. A HTML to XHTML transformation can be performed mechanically,
> which is why HTML is preferable until XHTML is feasible. Even when using
> XML-based tools, the output should be transformed to HTML (unless there
> are some overriding reasons not to).
>
> Mike
>
> --
> Michael Winter
> Prefix subject with [News] before replying by e-mail.
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