Slashdot Mirror
An XHTML Tutorial That Does Not Assume HTML?
stevelinton writes "I am looking for a tutorial similar to Dave Ragget's excellent HTML tutorial(s), but for XHTML 1.1.
I am NOT looking for a "HTML to XHTML" conversion tutorial. I want to teach a class XHTML 1.1 from day 1, without assuming that they know any HTML at all.
Does anyone know of such a thing?"
True story from last week.
Work conversation at the water cooler:
Me: So what are you working on today?
Coworker: I spent the last 6 hours making this page for [client] work correctly in Netscape 4.7
Me: Who the heck still uses Netscape 4.7?
Coworker: Apparently, [client] does.
Happens all the time. Browsers never seem to come off the compatibility list, new ones just get added to it.
- C++ tutorial that does not teach any C keywords?
- Linux administration course that does not teach any Unix concepts?
- etc...
No, I don't know of any such courses, but that's irrelevant, because using C keywords in a C++ course is utterly different from teaching straight C, and then saying "OK, now for C++: this is new, you can't do this anymoreHe doesn't want an XHTML course that doesn't use the HTML tags at all - that's impossible. He just wants a course that STARTS right out with XHTML, and that doesn't teach HTML, and then expect the students to alter what they've learned to use XHTML.
I actually suspect this post is a joke, but because it was modded up as interesting, I feel compelled to repy.
A Minesweeper clone that doesn't suck
XHTML moves the presentation out into CSS completely, and so can be presented by an XML+CSS rendering engine; what's left in XHTML 2.0 is the semantics.
It's possible to use most of XHTML 2.0 in today's modern browsers, though crafting the style sheets to make it work is a job for serious experts. Here is a sample weblog page converted to XHTML 2.0 and it should display properly in most modern browsers: http://w3future.com/weblog/gems/xhtml2.xml
The big missing pieces are XForms, which abstracts the form data model and operations out of XHTML into its own module, and XML Events, which does the same for events (though it is compatible with recent DOM events). There is aplugin for Internet Explorer that make XForms work seamlessly inside XHTML documents, so I suspect that if you are so inclined, in a month or two you can be targeting to the draft of XHTML 2.0 with support for most of its features, and get cross-browser standards-based support for the same kinds of features you're writing back-end ASP hacks and browser-specific JavaScript and ActiveX controls for today. (No, it won't work in IE 4.0 or Netscape 4.62, but neither will most of the hacks and ActiveX controls.)
Here is an article on XHTML 2.0: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/08/07/deviant.html
Here is an XMLHack article by Simon St. Laurent: http://www.xmlhack.com/read.php?item=1741 who writes
Unfortunately, the people who sign the checks don't so much care about clean HTML code as they do their pretty layout working in every browser they might use no matter how decrepit it is.
Nowadays I am finding a lot of clients who react positively to a discussion of how writing HTML 4.01 strict code saves them both development and maintence dollars.
That 2-3% of people using Netscape 4.0 etc. costs the client a lot of money to support.
Since XHTML 1.x is just a reformulation of HTML4 as XML, all you need to do is find/devise a good HTML course, and add in the XML/XHTML specific bits such has closing empty tags, well-formedness, etc, etc. It shouldn't bee too hard.
Of course, the other comments posted about the importance of using the correct semantics, the separation of style and content, etc, etc must also be taken into account, but that is true for HTML as well. A good HTML course will focus on that anyway.
You shouldn't need radically different HTML4/XHTML1 courses.
/mike
-- "So, what's the deal with Auntie Gerschwitz et all?"