Hi guys, I'm in the process of converting my site to validate to xhtml strict. I set it upon myself as a challenge. Someone asked me yesterday, whats the point? Only advantages I could think of were smaller output size and more up-to-date code. The site is currently a massive mess of tables, nested tables, spacer gifs - the old-fashioned-but-still-effective way! So, what benefits will I get from converting to xhtml strict? will it improve my search engine rankings? I don't see how it could. Cheers, Mat
If its currently built using tables, then I would imagine that updating it to the newest would be the most logical thing to do, rather than update it a bit and then have to do it further in a year or so. Just jump in at the deep end and you'll find lots of advantages along the way (such as the ease of updating the design etc). Good luck!
whilst it is always good to set a challenge i wouldn't go about doing it just to be able to say it's xhtml strict and validates, but definetly clean up your layout and coding to remove tables and spacer gifs. The only way you would benenfit in rankings is if your layout is blocking spiders from fully spidering your pages, but that would only give you a better chance in the SE because your content is now able to "compete", but no, conveting to xhtml will not improve your rankings!
I personally don't think it's worth it. It feels great when you clean it up, and it passes the little checker, but overall it's just going to consume a lot of your time.
Simply fixing what is necessary to make it validate against xhtml probably won't yield you many advantages. However if you clear up your code and separate presentation (css) from content (xhtml or html) then you will see numerous benefits down the road.