Strict or Transitional markup?

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16 January 2005

HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 offer Strict and Transitional markup styles. Strict markup results in "cleaner" code because it forces greater use of cascading style sheets (CSS) for most presentational controls - hence and greater separation of content from presentation. Transitional is much more flexible - you can choose to use style sheets if you wish - but it's not essential because many presentational attributes can be coded directly into the (X)HTML file (such as aligns, widths and background colours).

Strict Markup

Personally I can see few reasons to still choose transitional over strict markup, I can understand why people might use HTML 4.01 over XHTML - with the whole MIME type issue regarding Internet Explorer. The main reasons to use Strict markup is because it encourages full use of style sheets. Now this is a whole other article - but there are many reasons why you use be using style sheets to they're fullest.

Transitional Markup

Some web designers may use XHTML 1.0 Transitional over Strict because Strict does drop some maybe useful attributes. The main one being target making target="_blank" no longer valid code since the specifications states it should be the users decision to open a new browser window only (again this is another topic for debate). Also removed is the start attribute for lists which I'm cannot see any logical reason for.

Transitional is still effective and is no doubt the most common markup style used today, but with web standards finally getting recognition is it time to shift to Strict and ditch Transitional for good?

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