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it’s easy once you know how.

XHTML, Hyperlinks and separating content from style.

Posted by James - 15/10/07 at 09:10:51 pm

XHTML is the attempt to purify the traditional mishmash of HTML standards, separating content from appearance, and to create a more elegant solution, for a more civilized age.

That’s great in theory – but unless you’re armed with a plethora of cross-browser scripts and an iron will, moving to XHTML 1.0 Strict is a hard, bumpy road. And often one with little discernable gain. Did you know you can’t use target attributes in link tags? Or alignment tags? Ok, so the alignment tags is a non-issue – we can do the same with CSS styles. But how, pray tell, do we achieve the feats we take for granted in HTML – target=”_blank” ?

I’ve been pointed down the JavaScript road by several people, but I don’t quite get how JavaScript is the solution after all, JavaScript made popup blockers what they are today. Nevertheless, here’s an interesting article from A List Apart. They cover several solutions, most of which are ugly and, well, not a real solution to avoiding the target attribute. The final option they cover however, is just the charm.

So, how does it work?

Well, the solution – if you can call it that – is a little more high-brow than the scripts I write from day-to-day, using listeners to hook into the click events of links, kidnap the urlrequest, and process it with JavaScript. The upside – you can leverage JavaScript onto any link, and perform far more complex tasks than the browsers’ built-in links. The downside? It’s a lot of preparation.

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