Suzanne — Tue, 26 Nov 2002 00:55:56 +0000

Also, convention because of the <script> convention. Sort of a "better safe than sorry" paranoia.

Busy — Mon, 25 Nov 2002 21:25:56 +0000

I think it's to do with the <?xml tag

the HTML comments "" were/are needed for version 3 browsers and below I believe, I guess they'd ignore the tag and try read the contents of it causing a big mess

Mark Hensler — Mon, 25 Nov 2002 19:58:36 +0000

Why do I see them all over the place? Was this at one time necessary, or ... ?

Suzanne — Mon, 25 Nov 2002 18:51:08 +0000

Mark, if you are able, it's highly recommended to use external or global stylesheets. When you need to use a local stylesheet, this is the way to do it:

body {background-color: #fff; }

Comments really aren't needed at all.

Mark Hensler — Mon, 25 Nov 2002 17:42:31 +0000

I don't understant the quote in my first post. Specifically this part:
"Note that XML parsers are permitted to silently remove the contents of comments."

Does that mean this shouldn't be done:

Busy, why would you use tag? When would there be any < or & to parse?

Busy — Mon, 25 Nov 2002 01:44:37 +0000

found this you may find interesting, have never used it

(XHTML and Javascript)

If you are using internal scripts, enclose it within the starting tag . This will mark it as unparsed character data. Otherwise characters like & and < will be treated as start of character entities (like  ) and tags (like ) respectively.
Example for XHTML Javascript:
<script type="text/javascript" language="Javascript">

//-->
</script>

(XHTML and CSS)

Enclose internal style definitions within the starting tag to mark it as unparsed character data.
Example:

Otherwise the & and < characters will be treated as start of character entities (like  ) and tags (like ) respectively.

Suzanne — Sun, 24 Nov 2002 16:53:14 +0000

If you use in your documents, just don't use the comments.

Browsers lower than N4.x and IE4 (or is it 3) will not recognize the tag and will ignore it.

The only issue with "choking" is when it knows that it is CSS, but has a hissy fit on the declarations themselves. In general, font-color, font-family, et cetera, background-color (and -image, et cetera) are fine in any browser that understands CSS. You'll want to keep padding/borders/margins from N4.x in some combinations.

hth,

Busy — Sun, 24 Nov 2002 09:33:51 +0000

As a rule I try not to use comments in .css files, if I do it's /* comment */

as to which browsers choke on CSS, they all can if done the right way