Parvi.us:Code

From Parvi - Open source software and patches

XHTML and CSS

Introduction

HTML has developed over the years, and not always in a good direction. Certain companies decided how things should behave, when the behavior had already been established. People could throw tags into a file with the same care a child would show as they threw mud toward a wall. And it would usually look right, all be it in only one browser.

CSS is a somewhat new player on the field and still fighting to be noticed in some cases. Some people avoid it altogether due to browsers like Microsoft's Internet Explorer fudging things so badly that you have to have a second CSS file just to compensate for their screw ups.

Why Use It?

Think of XHTML as the wood you build a house from.

The World Wide Web Consortium is the entity charged with maintaining the standards that govern how the code behind the webpage should behave and be interpreted. They've got purview over everything from HTML to CSS, PNG to SVG, XSL(T) to SOAP, and loads of things in between. But for all they manage, I find myself always write sites using XHTML 1.1 and styling it with CSS 2.1. I've learned what Internet Explorer likes and doesn't like, and more importantly what it treats differently.