Website Information Simplified – webbilia.com

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was created in 1994 to establish standards to promote the web’s evolution and ensue the various technologies work well together. Specifications include HTML, CSS, XML, XHTML and the Document Object Model (DOM). Designing in compliance with these standards will assure the longevity of your design. The more modern browsers come into compliance with these standards the better you will be able to avoid inefficient workarounds such as using tables for design.

The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) began with a limited number of tags developed from the prototype written by Tim Berners-Lee in 1992. Working in a computing services section of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva, Switzerland Tim had the idea of enabling researchers from remote sites to organize and pool together information in documents by enabling authors to cross reference documents using a link in the text of the files themselves. Evolving to HTML 4.01 in December 1999, tags supported features designed for browsers that render multi-media as well as features for those who cannot see a monitor or use a keyboard. The most significant feature of version 4.01 is the ability to separate style from content with the use of style sheets.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) provide a multitude of benefits for web site designers that weren’t available prior to HTML 4.01. A site style could now be controlled in a separate document that would stipulate the look of all documents across the site. Editing of styles affecting all page could be done in one place. Layout could be controlled with styles instead of the use of tables which were commonly used for page layout rather than their intended use which is to present tabular data. Such workarounds not only present the obvious aesthetic limitations apparent in older sites but cause difficulties in site maintenance as well as the ability to interact with other technologies. Though the new standard allowed new vistas for creativity it wasn’t until browser vendors complied with the standards that web designers were able to implement the standards in site designs. The Web Standards Project, founded by Jeffrey Zeldman in 1998, represented a coalition of web professionals who would eventually persuade major browser vendors to comply with the standards and support the same technologies in their products. A good explanation for implementation of styles can be found at the CSS Level1 page. Less clear for beginners but the current standard is the CSS Level2 intro page. Better yet, read Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards (2nd Edition).

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) provides for the creation of new elements and attributes. Where HTML is a markup language used to encode information for presentation in a web browser, XML is a specification for designing a markup language. An open standard, developers widely adopted XML to represent data and to process information. Today, even proprietary applications are able to export and import XML data making it a convenient conduit for exchanging between otherwise incompatible applications formats. Information for new users is a bit hard to find but you might start with the DevX XML Quick Start.

The Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) represents a reformulation of HTML 4 as an XML 1 application. Documents designed to this specification are readily viewed, edited, and validated with standard XML tools while still rendering properly in HTML 4 compliant browsers.

The Document Object Model (DOM) provides a standard by which you can access the various components (style sheets, elements, scripts) of your web document. For a script to access an object in a document, a form for example, it must be able to reference it to call one of the object’s methods or change one of its properties. When Netscape created JavaScript it did so to add funtionallity to its own browser, Netscape Navigator. Then Microsoft came out with JScript to do the same for Internet Explorer. This feature rich environment was called Dynamic HTML (DHTML) but required site builders to include different scripts for each browser and some features were not available for both. The DOM provided a platform independent standard for scripting page elements apart from proprietary scripts. It would still take time after DOM1 in 1998 before browser vendors would comply. The Mozilla Development Center has an excellent DOM Reference. [wb_5]

Using the correct Document Type Definition (DTD) is all the more important as modern browsers come into compliance with W3C specifications. This declaration tells the browser and validation services what markup was used to create your pages. If you use the XHTML strict definition you need to be sure your markup complies. Whereas you had open tags in HTML for images and such, doing so will cause problems with XHTML. Complying with XML, XHTML stick will not tolerate errors. Where you used <img src=”myface.gif”> you will need to change that to <img src=”myface.gif” /> to render it properly. If you might be using some deprecated elements you have to go with XHTML transitional. Otherwise they could be ignored. [wb_5]