Why XHTML When Your Web Page Looks Fine Already?	Visited: 665 Not rated Rate: Select 1 - Terrible 2 - Poor 3 - Average 4 - Good 5 - Outstanding
by Gyan M September 19, 2008

XHMTL is the acronym for the Extensible Hyper Text Markup Language.  This is the age of XHTML, and this will replace HTML very soon.  A closer look reveals that XHTML and HTML 4.01 are almost identical, but XHTML is a cleaner and stricter version and a W3C recommendation.  XHTML is the new wave in website design and new browsers are already supporting XHTML.  

The new mark-up language responds to the latest demands in website design.  With all those new tweaks around, upgrading to XHMTL solves some issues for Internet mobile browsers.  The solution is the combination of HTML and XML or the XHTML, which is a useful tool now and in the future. 

XHTML pages are easily read by XML-enabled devices; and before the whole world rides the new trend, there is time to create well-crafted documents that are compatible with all browsers, even backward browsers. 

The Internet Language Validation

As in grammar rules, mark-up languages like HTML or XHTML follow rules.  A good web page that passes validation is a valid page and has more chances than invalid pages to be read by browsers.

The use of XHTML does not mean your web page has to be boring.  It means you have all the nice features without the page being erroneously read and guessed by the browsers.  You may be looking at a beautiful web page.  This is presented by the browser. But browsers read pages differently, and if there is no standard, there are no means to make the page effectively compatible with different browsers.

With XHTML validation, a web page can accommodate different multi-media presentations, active content, and scripting.  Working with an XHTML expert assures the success of your web page in terms of dynamic presentation and creativity of content and its ease of accessibility to visual impaired users.

What is CSS?

XHTML language strips content to the barest minimum in accordance to W3C standards.  In short, the stylistics is out.  To solve the problem of styling an XHTML document, the Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) is used to give the page flair and visual appeal, so to speak.  CSS provides the flexibility in styling the page graphics and style.  CSS can be manually edited with Simple Textor Notepad.

Using CSS with HTML allows for pixel level control for element size and allows a quick editing of the site’s look without bothering to change the XHMTL.  CSS applications can determine the color of the page background, and other page graphics and images.  CSS is also responsible for letter spacing, word spacing, and text decoration and text transform.

Why XHTML?

Internet technology is fast changing to meet different demands.  To standardize Internet language and for ease of validation, web pages should be created with XHMTL and CSS.  Imagine a bare web page. Content is needed to give it purpose—and that is XHTML. But without CSS, the page lacks the visual appeal and flexibility. Together, the two technologies resolve technical issues plaguing Internet and web page design engineers.