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WHY, YES, I SPEAK GEEK...
This white paper provides an insight into why XHTML is the successor to HTML, and what this means to you...
AMBIN.COM White Papers: Separating Reality from Hype for Over a Tenth of a Decade!
XHTML: INTO THE FUTURE (PART 4 OF 4)
As discussed previously, XHTML's strict validation rules reduce the headache of designing around browser incompatibilities. XHTML documents tend to render correctly across multiple platforms, while equivalent HTML pages can require a myriad of hacks and scripts to accomodate non-conforming "standards challenged" browsers that fail — maddeningly — to display the same content in the same ways.
By definition, a standards-compliant XHTML document conforms to the W3C XHTML specification. The validity of such a document reflects a level of consistency, in structure and form, that lends itself to accurate processing by a variety of browsers, and will continue to do so as next-generation browsers come into use.
Jeffrey Zeldman, acclaimed publisher of A List Apart (www.alistapart.com), believes XHTML is nothing less than the on-ramp to tomorrow's markup technologies.
According to Zeldman, "If you want your site to work well in today's browsers and non-traditional devices, and to continue to work well in tomorrow's, it's a good idea to author new sites in XHTML, and to convert old pages to XHTML."
Zeldman explains that validated XHTML helps sites "work better in more browsers and devices, thus reaching greater numbers of readers, now and for years to come."
"When properly used, W3C standards enhance accessibility and promise long-term durability for any document published on the Web." says Zeldman. "If you care to reach the largest audience for the longest time possible, you want to work with Web standards, and where document structure is concerned, XHTML is the way to go."