The other day, I got to thinking about the HTML elements <b> and <i>, and wondered if they were still viably usable in production code. I’ve personally never used them before but I was aware that they existed and were still very much valid XHTML markup (even in the Strict DOCTYPE!). Wondering whether I’d avoided two elements for three years unnecessarily, I did some digging.
What the facts state
<b> and <i> are still valid, and as XHTML is just an XML serialisation of HTML, pretty much all the elements apparent in the HTML spec are true of the XHTML spec too—it is, pretty much, just the way in which these elements are written that makes them different in XHTML.
With the help of @smashingmag I turned to Twitter and my knowledgeable followers and asked the question:
“Using <i> and <b> in (valid) XHTML (strict)… your thoughts on this would be much appreciated. #upcomingBlogPost Cheers all!” @csswizardry