I have a Web site whose pages are XHTML 1.0 Strict, and the vast majority of them are valid pages, according to the W3C validation page. Some of the pages are not valid, however, as I use some items such as target="_blank" and ol start="26" and items like that.
Would any problems develop with indexing (or with anything else) if I decided to make the invalid pages transitional and keep the rest strict? Is it ok to have a mix of XHTML 1.0 Strict and XHTML 1.0 Transitional on a single site?
The only people or machines who will be upset are the elitists who want all browsers to cause errors instead of displays on anything but XHTML strict, and the employers who want everything in "the latest code" (not realizing that they lose the customers with older browsers who can't read their pages).
The best choice is to code for maximum compatibility:
- Don't use deprecated tags or attributes.
- Don't use improper nesting.
- Don't nest block tags inside inline tags.
- Close all tags.
- Use self-closing <.... / > for empty tags.
- Be sure to put a space between the / and the > in the self-closing tag.
- Don't require the browser to know style sheets to render the page.
- No javascript unless it's a form. Provide alternates for browsers which can't do script.
- No tricky coding.
- Expect older browsers to render all of the text, but without some of the formatting.
- Use the &code; character codes for the ampersand, angle brackets, and double quote.
- Don't put essential text in images.
- Use only .jpg and .gif images.
I myself, with the exception of two pages to show I can code in XHTML strict, code my pages in a reduced transitional set with no doctype statement (so the oldest browsers work).
More, because the stupid half-hour restriction kept me from finishing an edit where I had to look stuff up in books:
I myself, with the exception of two pages to show I can code in XHTML strict, code my pages in a reduced transitional set with no doctype statement (so the oldest browsers work). But I use two deprecated items, because the pin-brains at W3C provided no replacements for them.
Most of the W3C people are newspaper publishers, where the text and ads are important, and everything else is decoration. Their other impetus is providing sites which are accessible for impaired people and people who understand foreign languages. So it is quite conceivable that they didn't provide any way to do any of the following in XHTML:
- Center an image (newspapers NEVER do that - they want to keep text together)
- Start a list at a point other than 1 or A (but someone might quote part of a list in a web page)
- Make a list defining several specific numbers
- Align table text on decimal points (ofor accounting and science)
- Make bulleted lists which are not indented
- Set a font or a color for a large part of a document
- Insert images between list elements
- Know whether the col tag is an empty tag (sources disagree with each other and with W3C validator)
- Use as little space as you can on a free website with 5 mobies of memory
- Maintain a massive website without having to change everything everytime W3C deprecates something.
- Use older browsers (on older computers needed for MS-DOS timing compatibility)
Their control over the web makes as much sense as Microsoft's control over HDTV formats (which would otherwise have been compatible with NTSC). In my opinioon, deprecators need sledgehammer attitude adjustments.
They have now deprecated many styles they added just a few years ago, because they couldn't get browser makers to support them.
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