XHTML part 2: Rummaging through the garbage!

Yesterday I did a big post on XHTML. I claimed that XHTML was possibly one of the best innovations on the web as it would allow levels of syndication and remixing never before seen. I also claimed that XHTML has not been explained well to most people. Some people seem to understand the requirement that it is HTML that can be parsed by an XML user agent (most don't even get this though), but almost everyone doesn't quite get the future proofing concept.

So I decided to build a little tool to rummage through people's garbage. A crystal ball for XHTML if you will:

XHTML Future Proofer


I built this application with Flex 2.0, so you are going to need the newest beta Flash Player 8.5 to use it.



To use it just enter a URL to any XHTML Page. Likelyhood is it will not even parse correctly, but if it does you will see the DOM exposed by the document based on the XHTML rules for XML user agents.

I still have work to do, and more reseach to do around this. I am trying to determine what the best way to use XHTML for future proofing is.

But using this tool you can see why my previous post is valid. We are just shovelling garbage into the future.


////EDIT/////


I have just been playing with my little viewer a little bit, testing out as many sites as I can out there. I finally came across one that has a DOM that makes sense when you parse the XHTML.

http://www.digg.com

it is still not perfect but by far the best yet.