Website Balance...

[activemx]

Xhmtl is same as HTML with more strict syntax. This basically means that you are following the W3C standards and your code is strict to that standard. Nowdays, browsers are more forgiving so you dont necessarily need to use XHTML style.

[robot180]

We made my team's site in HTML, CSS, and PHP. I love the way PHP can be used to cinlude different pages, allowing me to make a template. I like HTML more then XHTML.

This summer, I was planning to redesign our site again. I thought about making two skins, one with lots of nice graphics and the other with no graphics. The problem is, which version should load by default, the one that may not load fast enough or correctly, or the one that doesn't look as nice?

[DarkJedi613]

Originally Posted by activemx

Xhmtl is same as HTML with more strict syntax. This basically means that you are following the W3C standards and your code is strict to that standard. Nowdays, browsers are more forgiving so you dont necessarily need to use XHTML style.

I was curious more of why you use it over HTML - I know what it is.

Originally Posted by jonathan lall

However, in theory, XHTML is an XML-based reformation of HTML, which means you can stick XML into it in an interoperable way. Writing in XHTML now is also future-friendly, because it's well-formed XML and thus it is eXtensible; for example, elements can be added just by changing the DTD and namespace. In a broad sense, this, and the more strict nature of XHTML forces standardization across websites and by browser engineers. Non-transitional XHTML encourages cleaner, more semantically-friendly code because it not only explicitly defines elements (you must close all your tags or the browser will not display anything, IE excepted of course, because it's stupid), but it makes your markup structural in nature, leaving presentation to CSS and other things such as (god, no) Javascript. I should note that the XML DOM is different, so much of your HTML Javascript, especially the presentational stuff, won't work with XHTML.

Thanks, I've been trying to write correct HTML 4.01 Transitional before moving onto XHTML (since I don't know any XML it wouldn't help me much). Unfortunatly...it seems every tutorial teaches you the wrong way to write HTML and every browsers parses the wrong way! Its a conspiracy against the W3C!

Originally Posted by sanddrag

No one has addressed frames yet. I like to keep the balance at no frames. Frames are horrible. Google doesn't like them either. Flash is okay but only in small quantities. It should not be used for navigation.

Very good point! While you're all there saying JS is the devil...I feel frames are the devil! They look bad, scrolling gets weird in them, you can't truly add to your favorites with them, some browsers show them differently, etc. Theres nothing good about them (except for showing nav...but its better to use the require_once() PHP function to include navigation).

Now what about iframes? I think they're just as bad - usually. Occasionally I see a site that just looks amazing with them, but besides that they usually look horrible!

[Mike]

I use XHTML Strict, JavaScript, CSS and PHP. Images are very minimal, if they're used they are compressed beyond belief. Like somebody said, keep sites to a maximum of 770 pixels wide and no frames. I don't use flash, as it's too much of a bandwith eater. Tables are also slowly being thrown out, so start using divs people!

You should try to be accessible, always use alt text, don't specify your font in px use em, a percentage or a relative size (small, medium, large) instead. Try to not use graphics to display text, people with screen magnifiers will find it blurry.

[robot180]

I never thought about it, but I use pixels for fonts. I'll have to update myself on this stuff again. I know that and heard several people say that div tags are better and I made the last two versions of our team's website with div tags, but both times, they caused so many problems that I ended up disecting the coding and switching to tables. The tables work perfectly, even though they load slower, it works better. I think that div tags have to be developed more before I will start using them.

The worst is when I put an image in a div tag that is larger then the division. I set the div width to a certain width and the image to 100%. The image, in some browsers, tries to be 100% of the entire page, but is moved to the right, or where ever the div is, and a left/right scroll bar is used. When I use tables, images always work correctly. I can use percents with images in tables and for the tables so the page resizes for different resolutions. If anyone has tips for me on this, PM me or email me or something.

[Mike]

Originally Posted by robot180

The image, in some browsers, tries to be 100% of the entire page, but is moved to the right, or where ever the div is, and a left/right scroll bar is used.

That's why I really wish companies like Microsoft would actually make their browsers W3C standards compliant. This way when your making a major site, you don't have to work extra for their lack of sensibility.

[DarkJedi613]

Originally Posted by MikeWasHere05

That's why I really wish companies like Microsoft would actually make their browsers W3C standards compliant. This way when your making a major site, you don't have to work extra for their lack of sensibility.

IE7.0 will be 100% CSS 1 & 2 compliment and maybe 3 complient.

Its not in that link, but its what I've heard from a couple reliable places.

[Greg Marra]

Originally Posted by DarkJedi613

IE7.0 will be 100% CSS 1 & 2 compliment and maybe 3 complient.

Its not in that link, but its what I've heard from a couple reliable places.

Great. Only three years until the majority of Windows users will have it.

[DarkJedi613]

Originally Posted by Greg Marra

Great. Only three years until the majority of Windows users will have it.

Just in time for us when we join the work force.

Windows Update will actually probably update most people rather quickly...as long as IE7.0 is available for pre-XP operating systems.

[Dan Zollman]

A few things...

Remember to always use the correct DOCTYPE declaration. This is the best way to make sure the browser uses the right DTD and processes code the W3C way, not according to the browser's standards.

I always consider the points in the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (although I don't try to conform to it; it's crazy-strict) when making a web page. WAI sets certain goals to make web pages as accessible as possible to all browsers, people on any computer with any internet connection, and people with disabilities. This includes designing web pages so that they don't need stylesheets to be properly viewed. Information on WAI can be found at http://www.w3.org/WAI .

Flash...
I prefer not to use flash. Not everyone has flash, and loading time can be very long. Visiting flash sites is not worth it to me: I use a slow Mac OS 9.1 with 56k dialup. As said above, flash files are bandwidth eaters, and it doesn't always look good.

Frames... Use of frames in general is not recommended. Not all browsers support frames. Frames can make it hard to navigate a web page if a frame is too small.

<noscript> can be used to deal with browsers that don't support script, but that can be unreliable. Once in a while there are also differences in the way browsers handle javascript. Better to have the server handle script (i.e. with php) where the output is going to be consistent than to have the user's computer handle script.

Dimensioning and resolution: If absolute units must be used, then px and em should be used. pt for font-size is not consistent.
Using percentages can be tricky. Just make sure that all related or nested elements agree with each other in terms of size. Dealing with resolution problems doesn't have an easy solution.