A small conclusion on the CSS wars

A true holy war started after introduction of the WWW standard: the XHTML/CSS2 standard. It’s really hard to say who won, but both sides are right at the same time.

The XHTML/CSS2 supporters really love when the WWW is open for any types of devices, starting with mobile phones and ending with desktop computers. That is why they think that everyone should use XHTML and CSS2 to create tableless layouts for their sites, so that they would be easily viewed by users with any hardware.

Of course, the CSS2 layouts are more flexible and afterward are easier to modify and improve. But a full XHTML/CSS2 tableless layout takes a lot of time and resources to build for the inexperienced people. It is simply impossible for a simple blogger to learn XHTML and CSS2 in order to build his page as required by the new standards. Another minus the new standard has is the incompatibility with the old browsers. Now many people still use Internet Explorer 4, the old Netscape Navigator and other outdated web browsers. An even if on the new browsers everything will work ideally, the old browsers, who are not really compatible with CSS1, will have outstanding problems with viewing CSS2. In order to solve such problems, one has to search the internet for scripts, or create some scripts of his own that would block the unwanted code to reach the old browser. But that brings additional headaches and support costs with itself. Imagine yourself a virtual blogger, named John Taylor, who has a happy family and can write on his blog only after his children are asleep. Will he be able to permanently switch to the tableless layout and permanently correct the new errors that appear due to In the end one should get the conclusion, that even though the new CSS2/XHTML standards are very good and easy to maintain, there should pass some time until people would be able to truly use it. There still are some problems with the fresh implementations of XHTML, many people should upgrade their browsers and many more people should learn how to properly use XHTML and how to properly deal with the new bugs that it brings with itself.