CSS Redesign
Out of context: Reply #42
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- Schill0
[rant]
I think the primary concern with XHTML is valid code syntax, followed by structure (though you can still have valid code that is a mess as far as structure is concerned.)
The other benefit and purpose of XHTML is "Separation of Concerns", the splitting of content (HTML) and presentation (CSS/JS) layers. By separating these, it becomes easier to maintain the codebase and allow clients that do not interpret the style layer to still render the raw HTML code without inline styles messing things up.
Taking advantage of tags that by themselves convey semantic meaning is also important - eg. tags (and search engines LOVE it!) .. these tags mean importance by themselves - "header" - and give meaning to the document relative to their placement. If you don't like the look, you can alter the default behavior with CSS of course.
tags convey meaning by themselves in the sense that all browsers know their importance; a tag will be rendered "bold" on a PDA or cell phone that doesn't even support CSS, because the default behavior for a tag is that it's rendered in a larger font than the default body content. Ditto I think for search engines, they place higher importance on headers.
Well that's one example anyways. :)
It takes some time, but I think it's worth it in the long run.. I redesigned my site ( schillmania.com ) in the spring and have since had a significant increase in search engine traffic, likely due to the simple structure of the code. As well it degrades gracefully in older and unsupported browsers, for the same reason.
[/rant]