I spotted this on the Google Preferences page this morning but only in Opera. I couldn't see it in Firefox or Exploder.
Between "SafeSearch Filtering" and "Number of Results" there is an extra option
Display Google web pages in:
[x] HTML (default)
[ ] PDA
[ ] XHTML
Screenshot at http://aycu21.webshots.com/image/2660/1451445351448606598_rs.jpg
I'm not sure whether this is a new option or whether it's been around for a while – I don't recall it being mentioned anywhere. |
I'm guessing that's pretty new – and maybe even only a limited test as I'm not seeing those options no matter whether I visit the Google.com or Google.co.uk site... |
Can't see it either. Weird, to let a user select between XHTML and HTML. I mean that's a choice X/HTML experts with years of experience still fight about. I think users want "whatever works" without caring for underlying technologies. |
Ah – just re-read your post...
<< only in Opera. I couldn't see it in Firefox or Exploder. >>
Same here. I can see it in Opera too. I thought it could be because Opera specifically sends the following "Accept" HTTP headers:
application/xml
application/xhtml+xml
However, Firefox also does this but those options still don't appear.
|
Google referrs to xhtlm as the output for mobile phones.
http://www.google.com/xhtml
http://www.google.com/pda
|
Google doesn't really get web standards :D |
Yes, they do.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd"> |
No, I think they don't:
- they imply "XHTML" must be mobile, which is plain wrong
- the Google homepage doesn't use any kind of doctype
- Google Images doesn't use a doctype, etc.
- the Google Personalized Homepage forces developers into quirks mode for their gadgets
- Google often creates separate mobile sites instead of making the original site accessible based on the W3C's Web Accessibility Guidelines
- Google often uses some of the most deprecated HTML around, like font tags on Google.com
- etc. |
It's very hard to comply with standards all to gether I think. I've tried it to do for sometimes on some websites I made, but from the moment you want to integrate something else, compliance is very fast gone. (c.f. your ask campaign)
I'm a very hard supporter of standards though but it's realistic to see that Utopia is sometimes very hard to reach... |
