Why is XHTML syntax so widely used in web pages?

Question

First of all let's emphasize that syntax rules don't work alone, but they need the correct Content-type header to be fully interpreted by the clients. Currently web pages cannot be served with the correct XHTML header because Internet Explorer doesn't understand that.

The first advantage usually mentioned is that XHTML requires pages to be well-formed: true, but when browsers treat them as (malformed) HTML nothing enforces this rule, so it's up to you being a disciplined developer -- but you can be as disciplined writing good well-formed HTML too.

Another point often mentioned is that XHTML promotes the separation between content and presentation, but even in this case it doesn't really offer anything that can't be done with HTML -- it still depends on the developer since nothing is enforced, and no exclusive tools are offered.

So why do so many developer (including those of famous CMS/blogging softwares) still use XHTML syntax instead of directly writing what those pages will become anyway (i.e. plain HTML)?

Related fact: Stackoverflow uses HTML strict.

Answer 1

This probably isn't the actual reason, but it makes them parsable using a regular XML parser.

Answer 2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XHTML

From the wiki:

"The only essential difference between XHTML and HTML is that XHTML must be well-formed XML, while HTML need not be."

It's up to you which one you choose. There is no real difference in terms of what the user sees. Whichever you choose, please try to make it well-formed and make sure that your HTML/XHTML validates and follows the standards.

Answer 3

I suspect a major reason xhtml is so popular is cultural and historical more than anything. XML became quite popular some time ago and it is still used quite heavily. It is good for for defining a data model that can be sent over the wire using webservices. There are lots of tools/technologies that work with it such as xslt and many others. It is natural for a developer to use html which is structured like xml, even if there is no real advantage just because they use xml in other contexts.

Answer 4

Using XHTML states an intent, don’t underestimate that (but don’t overestimate this either). Web standards are politics: if nobody cares, nothing is gonna change. Using XHTML (or HTML5) signals “yes, we are in fact interested in the continued development of the standards.

Furthermore, while clients certainly don’t enforce XHTML rules with a text/html content type, design tools still can do this. XHTML is much easier to support for editors than real HTML (with “real” I mean the whole ugly SGML package). There are good XHTML validators that do much more than HTML validators can (e.g. Schneegans’ XML schema validator).

All in all, many arguments against XHTML are in fact straw-men that aim at some of the poorly-formulated arguments for XHTML. For instance, Microsoft is responsible of publishing long lists of purported XHTML advantages (such as semantic web design). Attacking those arguments is like reductio ad absurdum. But there are good arguments for XHTML.

Answer 5

Sadly, XHTML syntax isn't as widely used as the XHTML doctype. You'd think people would be conscious about it, but a lot of the time (at least a few years ago), an XHTML doctype was used mostly because HTML 4 was being "dissed". That hasn't stopped people from continuing to use HTML syntax though. Open ended <li> and <p> tags, non-terminated <br> and <img> tags, tag attributes not enclosed in quotes, and more hypocritical nonsense.

Answer 6

Currently web pages cannot be served with the correct XHTML header because Internet Explorer doesn't understand that.

Sure they can, provided you're prepared to use content negotiation to serve a application/xhtml+xml content type to those user-agents that say they accept it.

There a number of reasons both good and bad why xhtml is so widely used. Jay Askren has a point about people who use XML in other contexts, (I'm one of them), but I doubt if that accounts for much use. If there is a good reason why XHTML is popular, it's most likely that the orthogonality of XML is a very seductive idea. It's simply easier remembering "Always close every tag, always quote the attribute values" than trying to remember all the rules about when you can safely omit tags and leave attributes unquoted etc., even though it results in a more verbose document.

There are other reasons like the fact that it's easier to indent your code if every opening tag has a matching closing one, and if you do, you've got a pretty accurate picture of the DOM laid out in the source code, which can aid with scripting. But I doubt that this is a primary reason.