HOWTO Spot a Wannabe Web Standards Advocate

If there is a match, you have spotted a wannabe.

Talks about the importance of the alt tag.

tag. Claims <b> and <i> are deprecated.

and are deprecated. And spells it “depreciated”.

Uses <span style="font-style: italic;"> , because <i> is presentational.

, because is presentational. Wants software to use <em> and <strong> when the UI says italic and bold.

and when the UI says italic and bold. Marks up quoted text as <cite> .

. Complains about upper-case tags in HTML.

Claims XHTML 1.0 is more semantic than HTML 4.01.

Claims XHTML 1.0 is more structured than HTML 4.01.

Claims XHTML 1.0 is less presentational than HTML 4.01.

Claims browsers parse XHTML served as text/html faster than they parse HTML.

faster than they parse HTML. Refers to “the benefits of XHTML” without specifying what the benefits are.

Uses large XHTML 1.0 Transitional documents with table layouts while claiming enhanced compatibility with handheld devices thanks to XHTML.

“Future proofs” a site by migrating from HTML 4.01 Transitional to XHTML 1.0 Transitional and keeps serving it as text/html with all the old JavaScript scripts in place.

with all the old JavaScript scripts in place. Uses the XML empty element notation on pages that are supposed to be HTML pages.

Complains about doctypeless application/xhtml+xml or SVG documents and smugly points to validator.w3.org.

or SVG documents and smugly points to validator.w3.org. Claims all tables are evil.

Advocates pixel-based absolute CSS positioning as the righteous replacement for evil tables.

Changes //EN at the end of the public identifier in the doctype to the language code of the language the page is written in.

at the end of the public identifier in the doctype to the language code of the language the page is written in. Omits the namespace declaration in XHTML or SVG and claims it is OK, because it validates.

Serves documents written using a home-grown XML vocabulary along with an XSLT transformation to HTML to browsers instead of serving HTML, because XML is more semantic.