XHTML Challenge is a freshly launched project by Valentin Agachi, which enables you to create challenges between two websites. The script will analyze the sites' XHTML markups and return a report for the visitors to vote. The signup process and overall workflow is very simple. Within a minute, I created a challenge between Best Web Gallery and CSS Remix (see the challenge).

bwg vs cssremix

I asked Valenin: "why did you create XHTML Challenge"?

agachi

I started this project because I wanted to have a place to check up sites quickly markup-wise. There's a lot of CSS galleries out there, but not many look under the hood at the code and check them out. I plan to add a few other facts regarding the code of the sites challenged.

The site is created using a homemade PHP framework. The facts about the sites challenged are analyzed in the background after submission, and periodically after that. The thumbnails of the sites are taken from a 3rd party provider.

Valentin Agachi, XHTML Challenge

My thoughts...

The concept is fun and creative, however, there are areas that I think it could improve:

  • The voting system could be enchanced by Ajax. It is very annoying because the page reload every time I make a vote.
  • The site is missing a commenting system. People like to comment, who doesn't?
  • The vote count should be based on user's login, not cookie (and IP address I believe). This will prevent the same user from voting on the same challenge under different network or when the cookie is expired.

Check out some of the interesting challenges:

Mac OS X Leopard vs Window Vista
challenge

Del.icio.us vs. Digg
challenge

Facebook vs. Hi5
challenge

Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton
challenge

Firefox vs. Windows IE
challenge

Freelance Switch vs. Freelance Folder
challenge

Performancing vs. Problogger
challenge