XHTML vs HTML: Round 2
When XHTML was first released nearly everyone, myself included, rushed headlong into it. Countless websites were shredded, old HTML code was stripped out and rebuilt using XHTML syntax under the watchful eye of the W3 validators. When it was over, the dust settled and, for a time, everyone tried to pretend HTML no longer existed — scorning those who had the audacity to still use HTML.
Time passed. People began realizing that XHTML wasn’t the save all and be all that it was supposed to be: some popular browsers (cough: IE) couldn’t even properly render its content type of application/xhtml+xml, so developers were stuck calling it XHTML and pretending that it was truly XHTML+XML, but they were really just dishing out HTML that was properly formatted.
This is not to say that the “XHTML rush” ™ was bad or that it didn’t advance technologies and the semantic nature of programming: it, with the help of CSS, helped to banish the hack and slash methods that were intrinsic in the 1990′s because people started realizing what each tag really meant and peer pressure abounded.
Generating Semantic Comment Lists with XHTML
XHTML specifications provide three types of lists ordered lists <ol>, unordered lists <ul> and definition lists <dl>. Ordered lists are meant for content that must be arranged in a specific order — things like instructions, or lines of code. Unordered lists are meant to be used for content that can reasonably be displayed in any order such as navigation menus or shopping lists. The rarely used definition lists is meant to be used where one list item is logically defined by a subsequent item (a definition term <dt> followed by a definition description <dd>) it functions the same way as a FAQ or glossary. However, when specifically used for comments, the only sure bet is that the unordered list is inappropriate — because comments require a specific order to make sense — while the ordered list and definition list vie for being the second worst.
If you haven’t heard of it, Tiddlywiki is a single file, off-line, single user “wiki” that you can use to store notes and information in an easy-to-retrieve format. I found it and decided I loved it…for about 6 hours. Now I’m looking at the source code and trying to understand it so I can rip out all the stuff I don’t like and replace it.
Tiddlywiki doesn’t allow any sort of XHTML and requires all code to be done in textile. This is great once in a while or for places where XHTML would be a bad idea, but for people like me who have been writing HTML since the <blink> tag was the “in” thing, this is just irritating and I was finding that I was having to go back over my “tiddles” frequently to coax the content into displaying what I want.
