2004 / December 11^th/ Developers, Meet XHTML. XHTML, Meet Developers.

Now that we’re all introduced, hopefully we can become friends. Maybe it’s me, but I’ve noticed that web developers seem to have this aversion towards XHTML and using web standards. Now, what I don’t understand is why. Using clean tableless layouts makes developing a breeze. No more “Oh damn, I missed a <tr> somewhere and now I broke the entire site.” Options open up and instead of laying out tables and tables of forms you can suddenly replace it all with <label> tags. What a wonderful life.

I speak of this because I too am a developer. Not just the “I can do a bit of PHP” kind of developer either. I’d like to think I’m pretty versatile – I know a lot of PHP, a lot of XML, and I’ve started learning XSL lately for some projects at work. I can create large applications, and pretty much do whatever I need with PHP at this point. I don’t feel limited in any way – so yes, I am pretty confident in my developing skills. I realize that from a developer’s standpoint they just want HTML to work. They don’t want to have to try – but then I ask why so many developers choose to get lost in forests of tables rather than adopting a much simpler standards-based approach?

Perhaps the issue is exposure. Few developers even know the basics of HTML, or how it works. They just know that if they keep nesting tables, eventually it’ll work. They want to segment things out into blocks and sections – and tables seemed to do the job. What they didn’t realize is that block could have just as easily been an <h1> and a <p> instead of a table with inline styles. But maybe they didn’t know you could do this. Maybe they’re afraid of CSS. Who knows.

Separation of presentation and data

This is something that really excites programmers. When you start talking about building content management programs on XML and transforming it using XSL into the webpage, they get way excited. So excited in fact, that they decide to share this fact with the production team. Recently I ran into this at work when the Engineering team decided to hand of XSL breakdown of CMS templates to Web Production. I’m all fine and dandy with it, because I really do think XML is the future (present) of the web. My co-workers start telling me how exciting this technology will change the web because changing one XSL page can make the entire site look different. Hmm? sounds familiar, doesn’t it? So I raise my hand and offer a response, “So, it’s just like CSS for XHTML, right?”

Well, of course it is. XSL stands for extensible style sheets. Sound very familiar to cascading style sheets doesn’t it? Well of course XSL is different, but it’s the same idea. Remember those analogies on the SATs?

xml : xsl :: xhtml : css

The issue came up when the engineer said something I thought I’d never hear. “It’s not possible to change the appearance of an HTML document by changing one file.” I let it slide, but afterwords I showed my co-worker The CSS Zen Garden which he was quite impressed with. I showed him a few very simple things, and how beautiful life can become while using web standards from a development standpoint. You can build entire applications using clean markup ? hand it off to a designer and have your page look beautiful with lots of CSS goodness.

We’re getting there

With the development of programs like WordPress, we’re getting there. Developers are learning how wonderful standards really are from a development standpoint. Breaking down blocks and sections was never easier. No more making an application for one specific HTML template, or creating overly complex templating systems. But I think we still have a ways to go. Developers, the torch is in your hands now. Designers across the world are flocking to programming languages like PHP because of its simplicity. Designers are learning how to parse RSS (XML) documents using PHP. But most developers are still stuck in the HTML 4.0 days. I think it’s time they caught up. The good news is that it won’t take that long, not that long at all. In fact, the only thing that needs to happen is to stop using extraneous markup and start using lean standards-based markup instead.

1. 

   Wired

   December 14^th | #

   “I speak of this because I too am a developer. Not just the “I can do a bit of PHP” kind of developer either.”

   Yeah, that’s me lol. You do know what may use this stuff right? :)

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