<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=UTF-8″ />

You’re serving with an XHTML doctype and a HTML content-type. This is VERY WRONG(tm).

> However this problem is not going anywhere, because many browsers still support HTML code that is both valid and invalid.

And browsers support XHTML that is tag soup. As in XHTML served as HTML as in 99% of all XHTML sites, (including this one).

Unfortunately,

1. Easier to parse by search engines and other spiders

They parse the content. XHTML or HTML doesn’t make much difference.

2. Easier to change in the future, just edit one line in the stylesheet

You mean you don’t use CSS with HTML? Actually stylesheets are harder for designers in XHTML than HTML. The tags must be lower-case and html tag is the main one rather than body in XHTML.

3. Easier to change a lot of different tags

No idea what you mean.

4. Many more options that are missing from HTML (ei: fancy borders, different list bullets)

Are you serious? This is CSS not HTML or XHTML and is present in both.

5. Faster loading times because of reduced file size

XHTML will almost always have a larger file size because it needs to be strictly valid or it’ll throw a fatal error.

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You’re right in saying there are advantages to using XHTML – I use it on my own site. BUT the benefits you’ve listed are for HTML. Designers SHOULD use HTML NOT XHTML. XHTML is XML. It’s for parsing by machines. It’s for using other namespaces. HTML is for “web design”.

Arguing about table-based layouts is irrelevant – you do that in both XHTML and HTML.

The real sin here is not using HTML – HTML is good. The sin is using XHTML and not knowing what it actually is. Because it’s certainly not a substitute for HTML, and serving it as text/html is almost akin to using ill-formed HTML anyway.

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Now, I don’t mean anything personally, but unfortunately, this prevailing view that XHTML is “better” than HTML is simply untrue and unfounded and is harming the web.

This topic does deserve further discussion though, and I’m putting it on my To Blog list.

For years i’ve heard web designers bitch about using nested tables (or any tables at all) for layout control, but not one has yet been able to tell me WHY. i hear the “separation of content and layout” argument from time to time, but if using template tags to replace the content during page generation then that point is largely moot because the content and layout *are* separated.

So… what is SO evil about using tables for layout? (Let’s not forget that it’s the only *portable* way to manage HTML layout. Even text-based browsers can work with tables.)