HTML 4.01, or XHTML? Ajax?

[invertedpanda]

Ok, I'm trying to expand myself as a developer, in order to be able to offer my customers more options.

I currently code my websites in HTML 4.01 strict, but I'm wondering.. What advantages would XHTML bring?

Also, what about AJAX, or any other extensions to web programming available today? How useful are they? Who do they apply to the most?

[buntine]

What advantages would XHTML bring?

Spend 20 minutes on it, and you've got it -- provided you are indeed proficient in HTML 4.01, of course. Its almost identical except for a few rules and markup alterations.

Master the basic programming concepts and learning a new technology will not be a big hassle. It's not really worth kicking up a storm about this stuff. Everyone you ask will give you a different answer ranging from "You must learn PHP or you will die a horrible death" to "Make sure you learn PASCAL".

As always, just keep up with the trends and further your knowledge at a comfortable pace..

Regards.

[Charles]

On the web and for general public use XHTML has no advantages and quite a few disadvantages. It is quite easy to qwrite a page that you think works as XHTML but doesn't really and it is quite easy to write an XHTML page that follows all of the XHTML rules but that doesn't work on HTML browsers. And only MSIE properly impliments XHTML at the moment.

[buntine]

Agreed. To me, XHTML is not the Holy Grail some people tend to accredit it to. But, if you feel comfortable with it and feel its the right approach to markup, by all means, implement it!

Regards.

[Robert Wellock]

http://devedge-temp.mozilla.org/viewsource/2003/xhtml-style-script/index_en.html

[felgall]

It depends on whether you are just planning on coding to XHTML standards to make your code easier to port over to XML later or whether you intend to try to have it delivered as XML on non-IE browsers. For example the coding requirements for any Javascript the page uses is totally different for XML.