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Why I use HTML (instead of xHTML)

Sean of Elementary Group Standards asked me, as part of a CSS Spring Reboot 2006 ques­tion­naire, why I used HTML 4. Was using HTML instead of xHTML a con­cious choice on my part? Absolutely.

While the other people who were ques­tioned man­aged to keep it nice and con­cise, I man­aged to write up a whole bucket load of words about it. As oth­ers asked me why I made sure Bite Size Standards is HTML 4, I’ve decided to post my answer here too.

As pub­lished on Elementary Group Standards:

“I’ve used xHTML for 5 years, from 2001 til 2006. My ori­ginal reason for using it was that it is sup­posed to be the future. It would have bene­fits like in-line SVG and MathML. It was presen­ted as TheThingToUse™ with CSS.

There are two things about xHTML which make it a poor choice for (pub­lic) sites. Both of them have to do with xHTML’s mime-types. In short, xHTML can be sent with text/html or application/xhtml+xml as the mime-type. On the web xHTML is usu­ally sent as text/html, as Internet Explorer (which has 83+% mar­ket share) doesn’t sup­port the other mime-type. Both mime-types are valid for xHTML 1.0, but (sup­port­ing) browsers do handle them differently.

It’s the hand­ling of the same code dif­fer­ently where xHTML’s prob­lem lies. When xHTML 1.0 is sent as text/html, it is handled as HTML. This means that it has zero user bene­fits over HTML 4.01.

When sent as application/xhtml+xml, you could use MathML — but — the browsers will also apply dra­conian error hand­ling. This way users vis­it­ing the site will be pun­ished (by not being able to see the site) for mis­takes by the cre­ator (which could be the developer, the CMS, the per­son updat­ing the text or indeed the user her/himself just writ­ing some­thing). Simple things like a mis­placed “&” on a page (instead of “&”) will com­pletely shut off a page from its users.

So not only are there no bene­fits over HTML 4.01 because you have to send Internet Explorer text/html — you do get user-punishing error hand­ling from other browsers if you decide to send to them the application/xhtml+xml mimetype.

No bene­fits but increased head­aches? Mwa, count me out.

Some people might say ‘but xHTML is the future!’ This may well be, but is of little con­sequence. The future ver­sions of xHTML (1.1 and 2.0) are not back­wards com­pat­ible with xHTML 1.0, so writ­ing xHTML now gains you little in the future. Furthermore HTML 5 is com­ing. Who says that can’t be the future?

My recom­mend­a­tions for writ­ing HTML? Use the doc­type ‘HTML 4.01 Strict’ and write your code as xHTML com­pat­ible as pos­sible. This means self-closing tags in the body, but not in the head.*

*Little known fact: It’s actu­ally in the spec that you’re not allowed to self-close the meta or link tags. Quite silly in prac­tical terms, and I would sug­gest to the HTML 5 people that they change that1.

I hope this answers all the ques­tions people have, but if you have any more (or dare to ques­tion my argu­ments!) don’t hes­it­ate to use the com­ment form accom­pa­ny­ing this journal entry.

  1. And lo and behold they did! In HTML 5 it’s com­pletely up to you whether you self-close tags or not. ↩
Have a look at more Code or Hypertext

8 Responses to “Why I use HTML (instead of xHTML)”

  1. Hayo Bethlehem says:
    12 September 2006 at 08:09

    Funny, i use xhtml1.1 because of the dra­conian error hand­ling. I love the do or die approach. It pretty much guar­an­tees good code :)

  2. James (AkaXakA) says:
    12 September 2006 at 13:09

    I know you do; And if it’s you — who knows xhtml by hart — using it, it can guar­an­tee good code. However, just one lil’ typo and you’ll be pun­nish­ing users for it.

    And for the web in gen­eral, it’s much bet­ter to have a “do or kinda do too” approach, wouldn’t you say?

  3. Ben Hunt says:
    15 September 2006 at 22:09

    I remem­ber read­ing in the SitePoint “DHTML Utopia” book that xHTML has some nasty weak­nesses when deal­ing with DHTML too.. Can’t remem­ber the spe­cif­ics though.

    Sometimes we just need to be reminded that, although xHTML may be newer and shi­nier, HTML4 is still *valid*, right?

  4. Ben Hunt says:
    15 September 2006 at 22:09

    Whoah, how DAMN cool is that!?!

    I put in my web site, and you look to see if I have a favicon set up, and use that as my glyph! Gold star to the boy at the back!!

  5. James John Malcolm says:
    17 September 2006 at 10:09

    It’s not so much a “DHTML weak­ness” as much as xHTML can have a dif­fer­ent DOM. So two pages which might look the same, might have ele­ments you need to ref­er­ence dif­fer­ently in your JavaScript.

    Not only is HTML 4 valid, in most of the cases it’s JustAsShiny™.

    And about the ‘glyph’: That’s just a favicon plu­gin for word­press — so while I can’t take too much credit for it, I’m glad you like it!

  6. BadHystrix says:
    22 February 2007 at 15:02

    Tah muchly!

    This is a most con­cise explan­a­tion of why NOT to use XHTML.

    Great for wav­ing at non-techy cli­ents and man­age­ment. :o)

  7. Edward Vermillion says:
    21 November 2007 at 16:11

    Umm… from the manual for the link element:

    Start tag: required, End tag: forbidden

    and meta:

    Start tag: required, End tag: forbidden

    So, what’s with the little known fact? Or did someone else give you false information?

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James John Malcolm MMXIII