New 2.0 Default: XHTML 1.0 Transitional

In a recent post Scott Guthrie points out that the final release of ASP.NET 2.0 will emit XHTML 1.0 Transitional by default instead of XHTML 1.1 as it has been in betas so far. That’s good news!

Many people, including yours truly, have been begging not to default to XHTML 1.1. Going from non-compliance to the bleeding edge (read “not-fully-supported”) of web standards would have been extreme. Microsoft has always put backward compatibility high on its priorities list, and a sudden change to XHML 1.1 would’ve wrecked havoc. Which is exactly what happened: Scott says, “a lot of customer applications broke” in this phase. Pulling the plug was a responsible thing to do, especially since most people don’t change page templates and even fewer understand the difference between XHTML 1.0 and XHTML 1.1. Hooray to sanity!

The fact that the schema picker works in disconnect with the actual DOCTYPE on the page really rubs me the wrong way, but that’s a story for another day.