[thelist] Discussing XHTML and ROI with your "boss"

Mark Howells webdev at mountain.ch
Fri Aug 16 07:37:00 CDT 2002


> It seems you're saying you make one 'page', then grab that and process
> it via
> XSLT or reparse it to extract data.

The idea is to contain one page containing your content ("data") and then
control it's screen, print or audible layout with a style sheet, be it CSS
or XSLT.

> If so, why do that?  If I've two
> massively distinct agents to target, I'd just use two separate templates
> (with XHTML or whatever in them) for the specific user agents.
> Input comes in, gets processed, data for the template is returned
> to the processing engine, which then calls the appropriate template(s).
> I don't
> need XHTML for that, and it affords the ultimate in flexibility.

So, in your scenario, how would you handle the 29 different types of web
browser that have visited my website in the past year? Have 29 different
templates containing the same content (but different mangled code), or one
XHTML template that they can all parse perfectly?

> If someone else is trying to screen-scrape me, and can't easily parse stuff
> because it's not XHTML, tough luck

The problem with your argument there is that the "... someone else ..." who
is "... trying to screen-scrape ..." you will be the browser of your
visitor, which is trying to parse the non-standard code that you are using.
It'll read your code, try and make the best attempt at displaying it against
it's internal processing SGML "rule set" and then, probably, show a
sub-standard result.

> I don't see this 'retargetting' thing as that valid an argument for XHTML.

I'm not sure what you mean by retargeting -- one of the primary reasons for
using standardized mark up languages (XHTML, HTML, XML, whatever) is that
when a new browser or browsing device comes along, then the content that
you've already marked up is ready for the new device. By correctly using
mark up languages code that comply with a standard, you're helping the
browser manufacturers to develop browsers which function correctly.

Regards
Mark Howells
<http://www.mark.ac/evl/>




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