What difference does using the XHTML standard really make?

I enclose my HTML attributes in quotes - or at least when I remember, I do!

I always provide a matching close tag to go with each opening tag - except when I forget to do so, or am in a hurry

I make sure I provide an alt attribute with each image - although sometimes I really don't know what I would say in such a tag, so I skip it

If I need an & character, I encode it as & - mind you, when I cut and paste I may miss some!

What difference does it really make to the people viewing my pages if I've got of few of these transgressions?

It was pointed out to me the other day that one of the sites I looked after didn't conform to the XHTML transitional standard in one area of the page, and there was also a specific user problem being reported. Nad it's very nice to have a "we confirm" logo there. So I took the opportunity to add a poll to the site, for regular users, asking if the changes I had made (which cleared 96 errors and 1 warning!) had made any difference to users.

What difference does the XHTML standard make - survey

What difference does the XHTML standard make - survey

I'm going to conclude that the exercise was worth doing, as it gives me a nice warm feeling. It will make things better for the occasional person. It's suggested that it will now render faster (not sure if I believe that). It stops people telling me that can't see my page because the HTML is broken (even if the reason they can't see it is something else - like our site is blocked at their work place because it's too good and they spend too long with us). And it probably help our search engine ranking - the cleaner the code, the easier for the search engine to understand it, and the more professional it looks.
(written 2009-06-18 13:19:24)

Associated topics are indexed under

A301 - Web Application Deployment - XML, DTD, XSLT, XHTML and More
  [2554] Adding retrospective ALT attributes to IMG - (2009-12-28)
  [2378] Handling XML in Perl - introduction and early examples - (2009-08-27)
  [1901] XML, HTML, XHTML and more - (2008-11-23)
  [1050] The HTML++ Metalanguage - (2007-01-22)
  [653] Easy feed! - (2006-03-21)

W502 - Web and Intranet - HTML Document Anatomy
  [2675] Redirecting to your main domain for correct security keys - (2010-03-13)
  [1811] Alternative URLs using % symbol encoding - (2008-09-27)
  [1463] All the special characters in HTML ... - (2007-12-07)
  [1431] Getting the community on line - some basics - (2007-11-13)
  [1187] Updating a page strictly every minute (PHP, Perl) - (2007-05-14)
  [1160] HTML - example of a simple web page - (2007-04-24)
  [993] Positioning with Cascading Style Sheets - (2006-12-16)
  [857] Strikingly busy - (2006-09-06)

W601 - Structure of Networks and Webs
  [1798] What does an browser understand? What does an HTML document contain? - (2008-09-15)

Q625 - Object Orientation and General technical topics - HTML for Web Application Authors

Back to
Client side (Applet) and Server side (Servlet) Graphics in Java

Previous and next
or
Horse's mouth home

Forward to
A day in the life of a hotelier

Some other Articles

Bluegrass comes to Melksham
Public Transport from London to Melksham, Wiltshire
Getting home from Melksham
A day in the life of a hotelier
What difference does using the XHTML standard really make?
Client side (Applet) and Server side (Servlet) Graphics in Java
What should a web site cost you?
Changing a variable behaviour in Perl - tieing
So what is this thing called Perl that I keep harping on about?
Perl references - $$var and \$var notations

2678 posts, page by page

Link to page ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 at 50 posts per page

This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.

Link to Ezine home page (for reading).
Link to Blogging home page (to add comments).

You can Add a comment or ranking to this page

Public Training Courses

Running regularly at our UK training Centre.
[Schedule] - [About] - [Book]