HTML and browser versions

[Padrill]

Hi all,

Does anyone know where can I find a table of which versions of browsers support which versions of HTML? Specially I'm interested in XHTML - which versions of browsers support XHTML?

Thanx.

[Charles]

If you follow the HTML 4.01 Specification (http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/) and mark up your page in HTML 4.01 Strict then yuor page will work on all browsers. XHTML 1.0 Strict and XHTML 1.1 are simply XML versions of HTML 4.01 Strict and will produce pages that work on all browsers if you follow the guidelines at http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/#guidelines.

[Hester]

Even WML devices like phones?:D

[Charles]

Originally posted by Hester
Even WML devices like phones?:D If they are browsers then, by definition, they will understand HTML 4.01 Strict.

[Hester]

I doubt Wireless Markup Language has the same tags as HyperText Markup Language. So the browser used for first generation mobile phones will not work with HTML Strict 4.01 code. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

Also, what about older browsers like Netscape 2?

Padrill was asking about XHTML anyway, which might not work fully with some net-enabled devices that use a 'browser'.

[Padrill]

This is my major concern. Older browsers. I followed the guidelines from w3c for XHTML but will older browsers be ok with <br />.

I'm creating XHTML pages from XML using XSL stylesheets and I would like to make sure that the maximum number of users would be able to see them properly. The pages only contain very simple XHTML.

Would anyone know of a program that tests wether your page works with different browsers. I think I've heard of one but can't remember.

Cheers.

[Hester]

Well Netscape 4 is OK. That's why they put a space in the break tag before the slash. Otherwise it fails to work. Not sure about even older browsers though.

[Padrill]

Quote from the book XSLT Quickly by Bob DuCharme, p. 190, line 13:

'...More recent browsers may have no problem with a closing slash in empty HTML elements such as <br />...but older browsers won't know what to do with [those] elements...'

[Charles]

HTML browsers are supposed to recover from errors and are supposed to ignore any unknown element or attribute. That's how the NOSCRIPT element worked with older browsers when the SCRIPT element was introduced. As long as you keep a space in front of that forward slash, older browsers can be expected to think that it is an unknown attribute and ignore it. If you omit the space, as I typically do, then older browsers might assume that it is a part of the element name. If you follow those guidelines that I cited then you needn't worry.

That said, I always transform to HTML.