I tried an exam about XHTML today and the result wasn’t that great (yes, shamefully I failed and I don’t wanna brag that I got a 30% score!). It lead me to search why xhtml exist (and just basically know if that makes me a really bad bad bad web programmer).

So what is the importance of xhtml anyway? I googled it and here is the 1 main reason - accessibility. Accessibility is not just for the disabled people but also related to all individuals connecting to the internet. We use different browsers, right? Browsers set standards and rules on how they will render the html tags and some old browsers, and new ones as well, will render differently if these rules are not met. Still, why the heck will you care? Here’s a list of a debatable/acceptable/sale-able reasons to answer why comply with xhtml standards:

• if you are from the US or Australia, you dont want to get sued for breaching the Disability Discrimination Act
  
• ensuring that your website is widely accessible to people across the range of computers and browsers means that you will not lose a potential sale because your website did not render properly on the website visitors computer
• compliant sites rank better on search engines, increasing exposure of your website
• changes in technology, such as new versions of browsers are less likely to affect the way your website renders

There you go, is that enough for us to move on and learn the beautiful world of xhtml? I found a few sites where to start learning xhtml. If you are a total newbie, this article could help you. If you have a little background and wanted to expand your knowledge, the w3schools is my favorite tambayan(place to hang out). You could also try the exam I mentioned above and let me know your score

For validation (if you are serious about it, you’ll need these tools), there are free tools to validate your website. I use the ffg:

• Firefox page validator (this one is what I use the most)
• W3C’s Markup Validator
• Multipage validator

There are still a lot of sites that do not follow these standards (that comforts me a little) and probably doesn’t even care (ouch! after all those words and hard work of other people setting these standards, they still do not care?). Now that you know, let’s just try to change our ways earlier than later for a better world and a better score. It doesn’t advocate world peace but it will definitely make others have a peaceful and easier life in the www world

Btw, I’m taking the exam again probably by next week. It doesn’t hurt if I try again.. and again.. and again.. until I get my level 1 certificate! hihihi