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XHTML

Tips for the easy transition from HTML [?] to XHTML [?]. XHTML is the latest standard for coding web sites.

Lowercase tags :

All tags should be written in lowercase letters.

Example:

Wrong:

<A HREF="contact.html"><IMG SRC="mailbox.gif" ALT="Contact Details"></A>

Correct:

<a href="contact.html"><img src="mailbox.gif" alt="Contact Details"></a>

Quotation marks :

Enclose all values of attributes in quotation marks.

Example:

WYSIWYG [?] editors often omit quotation marks for numerical values :

<img src="images/logo.gif" width=213 height=85 border=0</a>

Correct mark-up :

<img src="images/logo.gif" width="213" height="85" border="0"</a>

Close all tags :

In HTML many tags, such as the paragraph tag <p>, did not require a closing tag (</p>). In XHTML all tags must be closed, either with the appropriate closing tag (even where older W3C guidelines state that a closing tag is optional) or with a trailing slash (where before a closing tag was prohibited).

Examples:

The closing tag for paragraphs and for list items used to be optional:

<p>this is a paragraph</p> <ul>
<li>list item</li>
<li>list item</li>
</ul>

Sometimes closing tags are prohibited. In this case a close-command slash is added at the end of the tag.

<img src="image.gif" /> <br />

Learn more :

A list of relevant links can be found in the Resource section.

Related Issues

[ Browsers ]
[ Usability ]
[ Writing for the web ]
[ Information Architecture ]
[ Submitting documents for web publication ]
[ XHTML ]

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