One topic of controversy regarding web standards has been Internet Explorer 7 not supporting the application/xhtml+xml MIME type, which essentially means not supporting true XHTML as specified by the W3C. Of course with this being related to Microsoft there is the expected amount of flak coming from the anti-Microsoft camp. That said, even once you've filtered out the extremes from the discourse, there are still a lot of people who think Internet Explorer 7 killed/is killing XHTML.. [More]

I have combed through thousands upon thousands of client's HTML documents since I began working in web development, and even more in my career as an SEO. Much of this time is spent fixing invalid markup, shaving off unneeded code, and generally doing what the original developer should have done in the first place. One thing that I quickly realized was that a disturbingly large majority of the sites I came across that were created by "professional" developers and firms seem to have absolutely no idea what a Doctype really is. This is especially true when I see these developers slapping an XHTML Doctype on their pages, somehow thinking that since it is newer it will make them (the developers) look better. As a developer who has actually taken the time to pore through the W3C specifications for the different revisions of HTML and XHTML, I find that practice rather irritating.. [More]