There are many Web sites that provide information about the advantages of different markup languages, such as HTML and XHTML Frequently Answered Questions. Both XML and XHTML Web DataWindow rendering formats render the page in XHTML. XHTML Web pages are processed and rendered more quickly in the browser than HTML pages because extensive browser code is not needed to handle the more complex rules and variations that would be required with HTML.
Web users benefit from faster download of XHTML DataWindow pages because the XSLT (for the XML render format) and CSS stylesheets are downloaded only once and cached, resulting in bandwidth savings. Enterprises also benefit from the greater efficiency, scalability, extensibility, and accessibility gained by using standard W3C technologies.
Use only one format for a DataWindow in a session
Because the XHTML and XML formats were designed to exploit
the automatic services of the browser cache for better bandwidth
efficiency, you cannot use both of these formats for the same DataWindow
in a single session. If you do, you might see formatting anomalies
in the second DataWindow.
Table 9-1 compares features supported in each rendering format.
Feature |
XML |
XHTML |
HTML |
|---|---|---|---|
Web pages conform to industry standards |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Pages can be customized using an XHTML export template |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
XSLT stylesheets are cached |
Yes |
No |
No |
CSS stylesheets are cached |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Server permissions must be configured (see “Configuring XML”) |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Common JavaScript files can be cached |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Most efficient handling of large amounts of paged data |
Yes |
No |
No |
Postback and callback mechanisms for paging and other client actions |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Client-side mechanism for paging and other client actions |
Yes |
No |
No |
A Grid DataWindow page can be sorted on the client without a postback |
Yes |
No |
No |
Composite and nested DataWindows are supported |
No |
Yes |
No |
Absolute positioning is supported in Grid DataWindows |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Greatest compatibility with accessibility software (Section 508) |
No |
Yes |
No |
The XML RenderFormat does not support accessibility software. Some aspects of the HTML generated using the HTML RenderFormat do not support accessibility software.
