Don talks about why XHTML is a better option than escaped markup when embedded in XML documents (especifically RSS). In general, I agree with him. On the other hand, Brad presents the other side of the coin.

Personally, I think XHTML is a much better option, and it's just cleaner and more elegant (as if that matter!). However, I have to concurr with Brad that producing valid XHTML right now is hard, especially if you're using Microsoft tools. The HTML editors MS produces just output some of the most horribly ugly markup I've seen, and there seems to be a large disregard for producing and rendering valid XHTML across the board. IE can pretty much only cope decently with XHTML 1.0 Transitional. The ASP.NET controls generate incomprehensible markup. The default VS.NET templates are useless. Heck, I'm just testing the posting support in Newsgator 1.2, and of course, just as I expected, the HTML generated is pretty much useless to me if I want to support RSS 2.0+XHTML:body.

So, can any of you MS blogging guys that are pushing for XHTML see if they can get it to spread around a little bit? That would help tremendously....



Tomas Restrepo

Software developer located in Colombia.