April 12, 2004
@ 05:59 AM
Comments [3]
The Purpose of Standards in the Software Industry

I was reading Mark Pilgrim's ariticle entitled The Vanishing Image: XHTML 2 Migration Issues and stumbled on the following comment

You (the author of this article) have a valid point when you say people will want to upgrade to XHTML 2, against the HTML Working Group's expectation/intention. From the tone of this article, one would assume you find this a bad development; I however disagree: I think people should update their website to comply with the latest standards. Authors will have to rewrite their pages into XHTML 2.0, but, with server-side scripting and CSS in mind, this should be a not so very difficult task.

I'm always surprised when I see web design geeks advocating the latest and greatest standards with no indication of what the real benefits are besides the fact that they can place meaningless badges such as   on their website. Technology standards are a means to an end not an end in themselves. The purpose of having well specified technology standards is to guarantee interoperability between software and hardware produced by different vendors. In the case of XHTML, many who have looked at the situation objectively have failed to find any reasons why one should migrate to XHTML 1.0 from HTML 4.01. Arguing that people should migrate to a version of XHTML that isn't even backwards compatible with HTML seems highly illogical since it runs counter to the entire point of standardizing on a markup language in the first place, interoperability. 


 

Categories: Ramblings

« Designing XML Formats: Versioning vs. Ex... | Home | How Microsoft MVP Nominations Work »
Monday, 12 April 2004 14:29:26 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
While I agree with you on most points of the article, I don't think that those are meaningless badges. Granted, the benefits of technology aren't there yet. But the promise, the idea is. Yes, most of XHTML sites are broken, but just the fact of seeing those badges goes a long way in raising awareness of what is to come. Think of it as progress by publicity. Not necessarily the "right" way to do it, but it's proven to work with XML :)

I do think that one must question whether it an investment into making your site (and your underlying content framework) XHTML 1.0-compliant is justifiable at this time.
Dimitri Glazkov
Monday, 12 April 2004 15:52:54 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
Dare,

I can think of One very good reason to change from HTML 4.01 to XHTML 1.0 strict. (notice I didn't include the other very bad idea of transistional)

With that we can finally get to a non hodged podged HTML platform that has evolved during the hayday of the early web.

Strict should be enforced to promote better web design.

I do agree with several aspects of 2.0 and will go over those at a later time. (but it mainly comes down to seperation of semantics and style.

Although I do agree that Xhtml is just a refactored html. that still runs in a HTML platform, instead of a XML browser.

Douglas Husemann
Thursday, 15 April 2004 12:11:35 (GMT Daylight Time, UTC+01:00)
why reinvent when there's something that sorta works, why oh why
Bent Rasmussen
Comments are closed.