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Why it's now ex-HTML

Monday November 14, 2005

It seems I owe some kind of explanation for my decision to abandon XHTML for HTML 4.01, damn you and your responsible blogging expectations but okay here’s the story:

Actually, I am even ditching HTML 4.01 in favour of nothing. In fact I hate HTML, it sucks. Why? Because it’s a whore, it gives itself up to everybody and anyone and then just takes the abuse, it doesn’t object, it doesn’t complain, it doesn’t report it to the police. HTML has no self-respect, it sits there beaten and bruised on millions of web sites. Sir Tim must quietly weep when he sees what has been done to his baby in the name of vanity, surely.

You see this is what happens when you let advertisers and marketing people get involved, in anything. They fucked up TV now they are out to screw up the web too!

What I want is HTML that kicks up a royal fucking stink if it isn’t treated properly. HTML that takes no shit, with a built in big flashy message (GO AWAY AND LEARN ABOUT ME!) for people who refuse to take the time to learn this super simple language and who refuse to refine their understanding.

What HTML needs is a feminist style revolution, it needs to burn it’s bra in the street and demand the vote. When does it want it? Now mother fucker!

XHTML looked like it could be that very women but for those fatal words: may be served as text/html and then there is Internet Explorer. Fuck it, what’s the point?

Furthermore people, increasingly, want the ability to update themselves but they don’t really want to learn HTML. Thank god for Textile, thank god for things like Textpattern which are, I hope, the future of in-house updates for people who don’t do HTML.

In short I think XHTML needs a good few years before it becomes a reality for us mere mortals and right now I’ve got other problems to overcome. On a project to project basis, it’s just not important.

Web 2.0 can happen without it!

Future proofing you say? Purllleease, the marketing matrix has you! Knock knock Neo, wake the fuck up!

That doesn’t mean I am not interested in quality HTML, I am, I’m just not going to spend my time worrying about a DTD that really doesn’t mean anything right now.

So my focus now is working with clients to produce style guides, best practice documents for publishing text based content to the web. When I can get my clients using lists when lists are needed, headings in some sort of logical order and alt attributes on their images, then, and only then will I look at XHTML again.

And just for the record, no I don’t hold this site up as a good example of well written HTML, I need to heed my own advice.

  1. Jeff Croft

    1018 days ago

    Oxton-

    I would like your blog better if you would tell it like it is a little more. Stop beating around the bush, man.

  2. Andrea

    1018 days ago

    Do you have any advice for creating user style guides for folks that don’t give a rat’s ass about HTML? Or examples of stuff that has worked? I am in that same boat right now….

  3. Ross

    1018 days ago

    Here here!

    Took the words right out of my mouth… oh well, one day… one day.

  4. Tor Bollingmo

    1018 days ago

    Ah, thats how you make “Because we have to serve it as text/html” to a full post.

  5. Max

    1018 days ago

    XHTML makes more sense than HTML. To me, anyway.

  6. benvolio

    1018 days ago

    Hey there john,

    I understand your frustration – have lived it a bunch of times.

    But…

    one of the reasons the web has been so successful is the low barrier of (technical ability) entry. It’s easy to write some non-valid html, ftp to a server and bang you have a website.

    I’m pretty sure these very forgiving “standards” have increased the level of participation and made the web the big love in that it is (most of the time).

    If everyone had had to write valid xml to merely participate… I’m not sure we’d be her with jobs making websites.

  7. Matt Robin

    1018 days ago

    Abandoning XHTML for HTML 4 is like giving up on learning Japanese to going back to learning latin!

    I agree, a mastery of HTML is a handy thing for those sites that can only be run on standard-standards…...but in a few years time HTML 4 might be to markup what PASCAL is to programming! And that’s not to mention the extra code-bloat you get with conventional HTML…pages getting larger (around the waist), slower to load, and more code for those search engine bots to get through before they get to what counts: the content…...C’MON MAN…going back to html is like saying “Oh, you know what – Internet Explorer isn’t so bad!”

    “When I can get my clients using lists when lists are needed, headings in some sort of logical order and alt attributes on their images, then, and only then will I look at XHTML again.”

    And XHTML would make these tasks only easier – not harder….and your the one doing the coding aren’t you…not them? So what’s the problem?

  8. trovster

    1017 days ago

    Abandoning XHTML for HTML 4 is like giving up on learning Japanese to going back to learning latin!

    It really isn’t. XHTML isn’t supported by the browser that has the (general) market-share of around 80%. That’s why it doesn’t need to be used. You can write as invalid XHTML as you can HTML, especially with text/html, aka IE-safe mime-type.

    There is no advantage of XHTML over HTML in the commercial world, and won’t be, I believe for a long time. IE7 isn’t supporting XHTML so at least another four years.

    Also, a slight error, an unescaped ampersand maybe, on an e-commerce website is much much better than simply presenting the so-called “Yellow screen of death” to customers. One will turn a lot of business away the other will simply get on with it.

    Until there are huge content management systems that are completely non-HTMLer-proof and produce 100% valid markup 100% of the time, XHTML, in it’s current strict parsing XML form, is reduntant.

    Bring on HTML.

  9. Ryan

    1017 days ago

    For what it’s worth, I don’t think much of XHTML either (this from someone who uses it on his site and serves it up proper, except IE of course – though Mint has left me non-validating). At first it seemed a good way to go, but I just don’t see the point anymore. So what if my page is an XML document? It’s not a very good one. Where’s the advantage? I can see a place for it if you need MathML support, but not otherwise. If I was to take the time to recode my blog, I’d use straight HTML 4.01 strict. When (or if) I wanted to provide an XML version of a page, I’d use content negotiation to serve it up. [tangent]This could be a bit tricky since most browsers actually send a request that indicates they’d prefer XML if it’s available, and I don’t mean application/xhtml+xml. Why they do this is a mystery to me. If you’re a web browser why wouldn’t you prefer HTML!?[/tangent] XHTML offers too few advantages over semantic HTML to be worthwhile. Anyway, that’s my two cents.

  10. S?©bastien

    1017 days ago

    The turning point for me was when the IE team announced they would not support XHTML in IE7, meaning a setback of maybe 3 to 5 years.

    I love XHTML (I wish it existed), but content negociation with no benefits seems sillier to me every day.

    It feels a bit like a defeat to abandon XHTML, but I will switch soon, because to me XHTML is still dead, actually it’s even deader than ever.

    It’s been an enlightening trip though.

  11. Tiago Poeta

    1016 days ago

    Relax!
    Your work is danm good!

    Tiago Poeta
    Florian??polis – SC – Brasil

  12. C Montoya

    1016 days ago

    Rebellious html sounds like something I brought up on a discussion list a couple months ago… I mentioned that I would much rather prefer if browsers just didn’t display at all if the markup was invalid. Kind of like a compiler for a computer program… if you have an error, the code just doesn’t compile.

    Obviously this wouldn’t be helpful for the web, but I think it would be fun to see so many websites fall apart. I can dream, right?

  13. Small Paul

    1016 days ago

    Matt: er, I don’t think HTML leads to less code than XHTML

    In HTML you have the option of leaving off some closing tags, and some quote marks for attributes, and stuff.

    Putting your visual design in CSS can reduce code. But you can do that with HTML just as well as XHTML.

  14. Julian Schrader

    1016 days ago

    I code strict XHTML, but serve it text/html. This ****** internet exploder sucks…

  15. Willmot

    1016 days ago

    Bye

    (you disabled comments on the post this was meant for)

  16. Paul

    1015 days ago

    Great post. I share in your anxiety

    Rumour has it that C3PO is set to become the ambassador for web standards.
    http://www.pedesign.co.uk/gallery/w3cpo.html

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