Visual Web Developer 2008 Express and XHTML 1.1 (not applying)
- by Mike Valeriano
Hello.
I may be missing something since I'm not used to work with IDEs for web development, so please understand if I'm doing something stupid.
I've picked a copy of Beginning ASP.NET 3.5 in C# and VB to try and learn this thing quickly. I'm no HTML guru, but I know something about the DTDs and I want to either use XHTML 1.0 Strict or XHTML 1.1 while learning the ins and outs of ASP.NET.
Following the book (just started actually), I'm not having any trouble understanding the concepts, since I have a C# background, but what I don't understand is how VWD goes about applying the schema you select for validation. The book explains that the drop-down list on the toolbar is enough to set this, so that's what I did: I've selected XHTML 1.1 (since there is no 1.0 strict option, what I find really odd) and then started the project.
The thing is that the code generated automatically for the Default page had the XHTML 1.0 transitional DTD. Every other page added had the same DTD, even though XHTML 1.1 is still the selected schema in the drop-down list.
I decided to test it out and there it was: inserting some text in the design view and then applying a bold formatting just inserted < b tags on the code. Changing color does add a span tag with added CSS though.
What I want to know is: if I want strict XHTML (or 1.1) should I just code it manually? Or is there a "fix" for this problem (having a schema selected but not applied by the IDE)? Am I missing something really easy and dumb? I have no problem with coding it manually - I actually prefer doing that. The thing is that I really wanna try this WYSIWYG approach for once, since some developers swear by it. Plus I don't know yet if I'll need special tags for ASP.NET, so I think having them inserted automatically should be the best practice.
I couldn't find any similar problems around (MSDN, Google, here), and as far as the book goes (up to the point I've read), this is the expected VWD behavior, which I find suspect at least.
Sorry for the long text (and poor English - not my primary language). Thanks in advance for any help/tips.
