XHTML questions

hi

i am a 18+ year old web designer and i am new into this industry..
When u guys design website, do you code it in xhtml ot html? should i charge a higher cost if my client want it to be in xhtml? what i actually mean is xhtml better then html? in what ways..

 

HTML is dead really, as it will never be updated again, use XHTML and CSS to design websites as it is more flexible than html and will benefit you in the future.

 

Learn XHTML, design in XHTML. Anything else is wasting your time and your client's.

XHTML is essentially HTML but with more focus on structured code and standards.

ie. using divs for page structure instead of tables, using stylesheets/css instead of the ole' font-size, etc.

Using anything else you are just cheating yourself. Learn XHTML and then it will be easy to keep up with.

 

Definitely go with XHTML now; no point going with outdated standards when you're creating something new.

 

just some questions... why big company websites like google, creative uses html instead of xhtml?

 

HTML is not dead and will not be dead for some time to come. The W3 has just recently formed a new working group to develop the next html revision. MSFT holds a co-chair position on the group.

XHTML is, otoh, essentially stillborn. Until MSIE supports application/xhtml+xml, xhtml is merely a dressed up html with no additional benefit. In the interest of full disclosure, I write xhtml for an intranet that uses all modern browsers that can take advantage of the extensible DTD. I use xhtml syntax elsewhere as html to avoid syntactical errors due to the differences.

It does not matter which you choose to use, as long as you use the one you chose correctly.

cheers,

gary

 

You should not charge more if you aren't familiar with it. If you don't know what it is then why charge more? Charge more if you are a XHTML guru and you do it damn well and therefore you charge more. XHTML is generally easier than HTML because its all content markup no <FONT> or <CENTER> or even worse <TABLE><TR><TD><TD><TD><TD></TR><TR><TD><TD><TD><TD></TR></TABLE>

With XHTML you need to know CSS - and if you can do a website in XHTML/CSS and do it well then charge more.

 

how to know my xhtml skills is good?

 

DragonDude,
I'm completely starting out too, and know very little... but just browsing these forums is a huge resource. Pay lots of attn esp. to kk5st and Dan Schulz's answers to other people.
I think we'll find out how good or sucky we are based on how our pages look-- in all broswers.
According to gary, dan, and most others here, if your site looks OK in FF, Safari and other browsers (but not great), and then looks like total crap in IE or your site looks OK in IE and sucks balls in all other browsers... your code sucks. And at first I though most goofs in how the page looked were from CSS problems. But many of the answers people here have recieved was "tighten up your crappy html, it's not semantic/structured properly."
Because my company (in the Netherlands) has 99% of its customers using Internet Explorer, I'm going to write thier sites in HTML 4.0 transitional (with code as close to "Strict" as I can), so I can work around IE problems. If later I am able to shift to XHTML, my code will be tight enough that I only have very minor changes to make.
Also, I won't use XHTML at first because I've got no XML in the pages.

To conclude, you'll know your code is good after working on it a long time and listening to the ancient bearded gurus here, and testing your pages on ALL browsers (or at least FF, IE and Safari... if you don't know anyone with a Mac you can try using Linux' Konqueror instead). Code your pages and CSS to work in FireFox and then fix the minor IE bugs with hacks.

At least, that's what I've got from reading these forums... I even went back to 2 years ago and am still reading... people here put forth great links to other html/css resources! My first instinct was to start asking questions right away but I didn't register for a long time, and ended up reading more instead.

You can also check code you've written with the w3 html validator (sorry, don't have link now gotta get to work! : )

--Stupid Cat

 

Did you code seekthat.net?

If so you are not using the XHTML strict doctype correctly. You should use Transitional so you can still validate with some other HTML tags and use inline CSS styles and get away with more. Best for beginners working with XHTML - or better making the transition from HTML to XHTML.

You don't need to have any XML in your website to use XHTML - I haven't really used much XML, but correct me if I am wrong, but isn't XHTML like XML in the manner that an XHTML document could be put into XML easily? Especially with the strict doctype? Hm, I really need to figure that out.

Anyways you need to know how to design with CSS not HTML or XHTML. When you make the jump from HTML to XHTML you will be making the job from "HTML - Content & Presentation" to "XHTML - Content | CSS - Presentation"

You can definitely charge more if you can do CSS based designs using XHTML.

Check out this site I did a while back.

http://designcanada.dreamhosters.com/temp/1080Promotions/

Check out the Source - you will notice inside the XHTML the only thing referencing any presentation are the <divs> - which you will need to replace Tables.

See how you can create graphic intensive websites with little XHTML mark-up? That is when you can charge more, because it is now SEO optimized. Web Crawlers love easy to read and defined code (like header tags, alt tags, title tags, etc) with XHTML you can cut down the amount of code and have the important stuff (the content) be very visible to search engines. Also allows the site to be accessible! Also conforms to the W3C web standards. A whole plethora of great things come along with making the switch, and once you do then you have every right to charge more as you are providing much more value to the customer.

 

I'm going to disagree with some of your conclusions.

Any new document should be marked up against a strict DTD. There is no sane reason to deprecated elements or attributes. There is no transition from html to xhtml. They are different syntaxes.

I have no clue where you're going, here.

Whether you use html or xhtml is not a factor. You can write just as crappie a code in one as the other. Separation of structure and presentation (and behavior, too, for that matter) represents best practice either way.

That's more for good web design (not graphic design—don't confuse the two ) than xhtml over html. I charge more to work with table layouts. Clients are quick to accept the idea of modern practice.

cheers,

gary

 

yes.. i code seekthat.net, huh? i am not using the XHTML strict doctype correctly.. i am confused

 

You're using the html 4.01 transitional DTD, not xhtml.

You should validate your markup. For example, look at lines 53 and 54:

        <td height="80"><link href="../css/articles.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<style type="text/css">

Code (markup):

The link and style elements are not allowed in the body of the document. You have more than 100 errors scattered about the page.

cheers,

gary

 

Well, man...
It's a hard question.... I sometimes use HTML, but I just learned XHTML, then you need to use div's, because no tables are allowed. I'd say if it's a simple site and you don't want to spend much time for it, use HTML, if you have a complicated site like me, use XHTML

 

Tables are perfectly acceptable in XHTML, at least in the sense that it will validate, thats transitional and strict by the way.

 

i validated it.. can gurus please help me check?

 

To validate XHTML try downloading HTML KIT

 

what html kit? where can i download it? help appreciated..thanks

 

http://validator.w3.org/

 

I'd use XHTML, I wouldn't even code a html site now so asking for more wouldn't even come into it.