Why XHTML and CSS?

When the web was in its infancy, we believed that it'd allow us to develop documents accessible by all, anywhere. As any web designer knows today, we have yet to reach that point. The W3C developed CSS standard in 1996 to separate presentation from logic. XHTML was introduced in 2000 as an update to the HTML standard. One of the largest problems is designing accessible websites, so visitors with Braille readers, screen readers or text only browsers will still work equally well. With CSS and XHTML markup, the W3C has provided us an excellent platform to do this.

Imagine if the meaning of traffic lights changed from place to place. One day, you might be in a town where the red signal means go. We avoid this by creating standards. In the same way, we must also maintain standards on the web. This means that a website can be easily viewed whether it is being viewed on a standard browser or a cell phone or even, as stated earlier, by a Braille reader.

It was stated that we must allow all browsers to join in on the fun, but this website may not work with several of them. This is not due to the code this website is written in, but rather it is due to the fact that not all browsers are made to follow these standards.

This website is designed completely using CSS and XHTML. Both of these are W3C standards. To verify this, you can check the links in the right content pane section "Validate this!". Each page on this website will provide a link to the W3C validation service for both CSS and XHTML. Unfortunately, not every browser understands the W3C standard correctly. When companies ignore standards, the outcome is harmful to the users of products which don't follow W3C recommendations. Website designers often use hacks to allow visitors with various browsers to view the website correctly. Due to this, following the W3C standard is not a high priority for browser companies. Internet Explorer is the most widely known browser that is non-compliant. With Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft is attempting to make it "more compliant", but they still do not follow the standards that virtually every other browser complies with now. Because of all this, we have a "Default IE" CSS interface to make sure that our website displays correctly in Internet Explorer, but still we can make no guarantees.

Designing websites is quite an intricate art, where even a single pixel can break the look. This is made even more difficult by trying to work with different browsers, and each ones quirks. Companies sell compatibility charts of which browser supports what feature. Amusing at best, unusable at worst, but a fact we have to deal with everyday.

There has been little interest in CSS support in the browser market until recently. This is definitely a win, but there is a long way ahead. There are browsers which claim complete CSS 1 support, but in fact they don't and such.

If you are a user:
Please use a compliant browser. There are many which are actively supporting web-standards. Here are a few of our favorite, but you are by no means limited to these.

Firefox
Firefox is the most popular and well known contender to Internet Explorer. It is based on the Mozilla Project, and is the most successful version of it. Firefox is available for almost any current operating system. Best of all, it's free!

Opera
Opera is another free web browser, and by many estimates, the most innovative web browser available. Most of the new features that are added into other web browsers got their start in Opera. Opera, like Firefox, is available for most operating systems. Still running OS/2 Warp? They even have a version for you!

Konqueror
Konqueror is a popular web browser that is part of the K Desktop Environment. If you are running the KDE desktop in Linux, FreeBSD, or even Sun Solaris, chances are you are already familiar with Konqueror.

Note: Mozilla has several related projects which provide a usable and small web-browser for several platforms. This includes, but is not limited to Camino for the Macintosh and SeaMonkey for multiple operating systems.


If you are a developer:
Please try to stick to web standards. An excellent resource is the W3C Markup Validator and the W3C CSS Validator provided by the W3C. Just trying out the sites in browsers is not enough. Most broken web pages might look reasonable in the browsers you test since they go into 'quirk' mode if they find that the webpage is not structurally correct, but most web designers are only testing a handful of browsers, and most likely only one version release of any particular browser. If you are using Firefox, then you can right-click and select "View Page Info". In the window which pops up, Mozilla will show "Render Mode" it is using. If the page is standards compliant Mozilla displays "Standards Compliant Mode" otherwise it displays "Quirks mode". This free validation service is extremely useful.

Smaller sizes (nested tables, anyone?), customizations (just change the stylesheet!), and foremost accessible web-sites. Don't you want to make sure that your website works no matter who is viewing it, and that it looks the way you intended it to every time? With strict standards, the browsers don't have to "guess" what was meant by the source code, causing the website to render oddly or slowly.