HTML and CSS Reference
In-Depth Information
14.3. XHTML Basic
Recognizing the inherent limitations in mobile browsing, and seeking to
promote a standard content model for those devices, the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C) has defined a reduced version of XHTML that
caters to these devices. Known as
XHTML Basic
, this version of XHTML
defines a standard set of tags that are sufficient for creating effective
content for mobile devices, yet are simple enough to ensure that they
will be consistently adopted across a wide range of mobile browsers.
Be forewarned: just because a standard supports mobile devices doesn't
mean that a browser will. Often hardware limitations prevent implement-
ation.
14.3.1. Supported Tags
XHTML Basic is best addressed as several groups of tags that together
define a minimal but useful version of XHTML.
14.3.1.1. Basic content
XHTML Basic wouldn't work if it didn't support the four core tags that
define any document:
<html>
,
<head>
,
<title>
, and
<body>
. You should
never write a document without these tags, of course, and you should
use them to delimit your document accordingly.
More complicated document structure is not supported. XHTML Basic
specifically excludes frames and layers from mobile web devices.
Within the document body, XHTML Basic supports a core set of text-
structural tags, including the six heading tags (
<h1>
tHRough
<h6>
),
<br>
,
<p>
,
<pre>
, and
<blockquote>
. These are sufficient to create flows of text
that are organized into paragraphs and blocks of text and are identified
by headings at various levels, which makes for a readable document in
any browser.
