Re: xhtml compatibility guideline

Hi Jacob

Jacob Kjome <hoju@xxxxxxxx> writes:
> When you say "this is only going to work with bug-compatible browsers", are 
> you implying that browsers which only understand standards compliant XHTML 
> won't understand <br /> as opposed to the "correct" <br>?  There is nothing 
> in the XML or XHTML specs that I know of which forbid the extra space 
> between the tag name and the ending "/".

When I said bug-compatible, I was refering to browser that are interperting
the document as HTML are treating "<br />" as "<br>", as neither "<br />" or
"<br/>" are valid HTML.  XML allows spaces between an empty tag name and the
/, so "<br />" should be fine with any XHTML parser.

> The whole reason for the recommendation of doing <br /> is so that both 
> standards compliant XHTML-capable *and* older browsers can understand the 
> same XHTML markup.  The latter case being one where the older browser is 
> fooled into thinking that it is normal html instead of XHTML...basically 
> taking advantage of the way the html parser works in those older browsers.

The XHTML case is fine, it's the assumption that all non-xhtml browsers
behave correctly that bothers me.  It's the assumptions about how invalid
html behaves that has cause much grief.


> So, doing <br /> rather than <br/> doesn't hurt anything and it helps the 
> older browsers understand the markup while the opposite renders properly 
> only in new standards compliant browsers.  Since there is no harm in doing 
> <br />, why not do it by default for all XHTML output?  No switches 
> needed....although one could still be there if one really just wants <br/>.
 
Avoiding extra switches is a very good thing.

Reading though the XHTML 1.0 spec HTML comatiblity guidelines, it seems there
is a bit more to what they suggest than just than just formatting of the empty
tag.  Given that this is dealing with dynamic docuuments instead of static
files, isn't it possible to always generate valid documents?

Doesn't Barracuda have some browser support detection?  What's the experience
there?

Mark