pointlessness is now coded entirely in XHTML 1.1 with some PHP and an application/xhtml+xml content-type (or text/html to browsers that can't handle XHTML properly). Of course this was a pretty hard thing to do, and it requires so explanation.
When I first started pointlessness, it used basic HTML with no CSS, DTD, or character encoding. It worked, but it wasn't pretty and was liable to fail immediately on any browser that didn't use ISO 8859-1 as default character encoding.
Shortly later, I recoded the rather small site in HTML 4.01 Strict with inline style blocks for all pages. It was still a bit ugly, but it was valid HTML and CSS now, with UTF-8 character encoding. The inline style blocks were bit ridiculous, so I went to external CSS and didn't change for a while.
As the sie grew, the integrated menu bar was getting difficult to maintain, as any change to meant changing all pages to match. As I couldn't think of a better solution at the time, I started using frames. The site became a messy mixtureof HTML 4.01 Frameset, Transitional, and Strict. I didn't like it, but it validated and worked for then.
Around the same time, I experimented with XHTML. It took me a while to figure out how to do it right, but I eventually got it. The site changed to use XHTML 1.0 Frameset and Transitional, along with XHTML 1.1 for the articles. I'd outgrown Graffiti.net by this point, and needed a new host. Free Hostia seemed good.
When I was moving the site, I decided to figure out a better solution for navigation than frames. They didn't work completely right, were a bit confusing, and stopped me from using XHTML 1.1 exclusively. Some asking around got PHP suggested, and I managed to get it working to my satisfaction. The coding was now clean and fully valid XHTML 1.1, which was nice.
Which is now the current state of the site. If you're viewing this in Internet Explorer, that's most likely because of fallback mechanisms designed to serve these pages as text/html rather than application/xhtml+xml. I recommend a different browser. Mozilla Firefox or Opera would be the best bet for current Internet Explorer users. Those not using Windows are probably using a suitable browser already
I do this style of coding because I like standards, and I like clean code. If everyone was to code like I do, the state that Internet Explorer is currently in would soon become apparent and better browsers would quickly overtake it in usage figures. Sadly, this is just a dream as of now. But this site is my space, and if I want to make things hard on bad browsers, then I will.