Cause your mama said so...

Suzanne — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 18:18:12 +0000

I think Vinny and Megan explained it great!

The only thing I'll add is that moving to standardized code that keeps presentation from structure will also save you time (by the bushel).

And that xhtml requires consistency and logic that you may not be used to applying to your code, so you should consider using the validation services available from w3c, or through products like htmlvalidator.com or bradsoft.com (topstyle) (both for windows only).

Suzanne

Megan — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 17:17:33 +0000

The difference betwen i/em and b/strong is structural and more noticable for non-visual browsers. and just define how a piece of text will look on a screen - it doesn't have any kind of meaning associated with it. and do have meaning.

The w3c is moving away from using HTML to describe visual presentation - the new xhtml standard will only use mark-up for structure. CSS will be used to define how things look. Emphasis is structural, italics are visual... get it?

xhtml is much stricter than HTML - all tags must be closed. The way the cascading aspect of CSS works is that one element inherets the properties of its parent element. So, if you don't close your tags then you'll just end up with a whole series of nested paragraphs. This can be a big problem if you're trying to use relative font sizes.

Hopefully Suzanne will be able to explain this better!

Vincent Puglia — Tue, 11 Dec 2001 16:59:33 +0000

Hi IanD,

If I remember right "i" and "b" are being excommunicated, discarded, discontinued, degraded. This means future browsers may not recognize them. Regarding "": this also has become a new standard and eventually will be enforced.

If you want the latest standards, see w3.org If you need a better explanation, wait until Suzanne finds this thread, I usually defer to her on css/html questions

Vinny