Is XHTML 1.1 better than other doctypes?

Question

This is stated on this page http://www.veiled-chameleon.com/xhtml11.html

XHTML 1.1 allows for the easy creation of different display formats, such as a page format for printing, for wireless devices and PDAs, and television based browsers, simply by writing a new CSS (cascading style sheet) for the new document.

Update:

And this is stated on http://www.w3schools.com/w3c/w3c_xhtml.asp

XHTML 1.1 (Modular XHTML)

Small devices cannot support all XHTML functions, therefore XHTML 1.1 divides the specification into modules with limited functionality.

Small browsers can reduce their complexity by supporting only selected modules

Can anyone explain to me what authors are saying in this statement, and can't this be done by XHTML 1.0 stric or HTML 4.01 Strict?

Answer 1

The author of that quote is just wrong. It’s CSS that allows such things, not HTML or XHTML.

The media attribute for STYLE and LINK was introduced with HTML 4 and the CSS media types with CSS 2.

Answer 2

Actually, if there's any distinction it's between Transitional and Strict. Transitional allows you to do all kinds of wacky things in both HTML and XHTML. It's possible to abuse or misuse nearly any standard.

Answer 3

The hype behind using XML was because in theory, any XML document can be easily transformed to another. so you would have a single web app code, but multiple XSLTs transforming your pages just before consumption for any presentation.

Of course, there are other, far easier to use, templating systems that work equally well on HTML

Answer 4

XHTML 1.1 is kind of dead in the water, now that the XHTML2 WG has been dismantled. Also, if you look at the iPhone/Nexus One/Blackberry/..., you'll notice that "Small devices cannot support all XHTML functions" isn't really true (at least not anymore).

Answer 5

The purpose of xhtml1.1 is to divide the spec up into smaller modules that devices can choose to use to fit their purpose rather than having each device required to support the entire spec. No one doctype is "better" than the other but you choose the doctype based on your need. HTML4.01 is HTML. XHTML1.1 is strictly XML.

And as far as strict vs transitional is concerned, no one has any need for transitional in newly created web pages.

The first author appears to be full of brown substance.