DOCTYPES

June 5, 2009 —

I’ve been playing with HTML 5 and really, really like it. But it’s not production ready. At least not for client work. It’s not that we aren’t seeing signs of browser support. It’s that users hold on to their decrepit old browsers like they’re some kind of nasty, stained up, security blanket they can’t do without. And those decrepit old browsers don’t know what to do with HTML 5.

So, we do XHTML 1, or, more recently, HTML 4. Strict. o/

But sometimes, we’re aggregating feeds or hitting an API or integrating an ecommerce thing that spits out an ampersand that hasn’t been encoded and OMG THE SITE WON’T VALIDATE. So sometimes we switch to transitional, and I hope nobody is reading this.

Anyway, I’m glad to see more people stepping out to say it’s okay to do HTML 4. It seems incredibly pedestrian to still be using 4.01 in 2009, but it happens to be what works best. You know, for the users.

I still get a little paranoid that the time spent putting together project specifications and negotiating contracts will have me looking the other way when the proper geeks sprint off to the next, new thing. (<header> tags, in this case.)

Back when I used to blog, I think I mentioned how easy it is to run out of time. Maybe it was somewhere else, but the point is this: keep one eye on Cameron Moll. You don’t have to change your DOCTYPE ’til he does.

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