Al's TAFE Certificate IV I.T. (Website Design) Exercises
XHTML
XHTML is a reformulation of HTML 4.01 in XML, and can be put to immediate use with existing browsers by following a few simple guidelines.
What Is XHTML?
- XHTML stands for EXtensible HyperText Markup Language
- XHTML is aimed to replace HTML
- XHTML is almost identical to HTML 4.01
- XHTML is a stricter and cleaner version of HTML
- XHTML is HTML defined as an XML application
- XHTML is a W3C Recommendation
Browsers Support for XHTML
- XHTML is compatible with HTML 4.01.
- All new browsers have support for XHTML.
Why XHTML?
- We have reached a point where many pages on the WWW contain "bad" HTML.
- The following HTML code will work fine if you view it in a browser, even if it does not follow the HTML rules:
<html>
<head>
<title>This is bad HTML</title>
<body>
<h1>Bad HTML
</body> - XML is a markup language where everything has to be marked up correctly, which results in "well-formed" documents. XML was designed to describe data and HTML was designed to display data. Today's market consists of different browser technologies, some browsers run Internet on computers, and some browsers run Internet on mobile phones and hand-helds. The last-mentioned do not have the resources or power to interpret a "bad" markup language.
- Therefore - by combining HTML and XML, and their strengths, we got a markup language that is useful now and in the future - XHTML.
The Most Important Differences
- XHTML elements must be properly nested
- XHTML documents must be well-formed
- Tag names must be in lowercase
- All XHTML elements must be closed
