I know that some of you may have noticed that your pages may look good on a browser like AOL because thats what many ppl have and use the most to view their pages after they've made them, and you also may have noticed that it doesn't look as good in other browsers as it does on AOL. This is because every browser reads coding differently, therefore showing it differently as well.

This may come very helpful to you if you're trying to make your pages look "perfect" or nearly pefect in every other browser. This thing called XHTML (a combination of HTML and XML) is an advanced way of coding your pages. It changes the way HTML is made, as well as CSS.

I found out about this when i visited http://Star-Girl.org. Her site looks great on every browser that I've viewed it in, and it looks the way ITS SUPPOSED TO (the way she intended it to). I tried to get my site to look the way I intended it too but everytime I fixed an error another error will appear, so I asked for help in this forum. I got great help and was able to fix my major problems but didn't really care to fix my minor ones coz they weren't that important. I noticed that Lissa's site looks great and the way its supposed to on every browser too, and then I realized that both sites - Lissa's and Star-Girl's - are coded with XHTML.

I asked Jenni (star-girl) what did she do to make her site look good on every browser and she redirected me to this site http://www.jemjabella.co.uk/tutorials/ thats full of tutorials and its where she learned to change her regular HTML coding to XHTML.

I was angry that my 2nd layout for my very 1st domain site looked great only in Mozilla Firefox, but all that was shown on IE was the background image of my site and NOTHING was shown in Opera. So, I started reading the tutorials from this site and learned a lil bit of XHTML. My site still didn't show AT ALL in Opera so I decided to further my education on XHTML and googled for tutorials on it, thats where I found this site http://www.w3schools.com/. It has incredible and easy understanding tutorials for EVERYTHING including XHTML.

I had entered Lissa's site in this HTML/XHTML validator http://validator.w3.org/ and it wasn't much of a surprise when the results said "This Page Is Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional!" which means every code is perfectly done and it can be read the right way for ALL browsers and [screen] resolutions. I also entered the tutorial site Jenni sent me and the results said "This Page Is Valid XHTML 4.01 Transitional!" which means pretty much the same thing. So then I entered mine, and the results - "This Page Is NOT Valid XHTML 1.0 Transitional!" *surprised*, not only did it tell me that it wasn't valid but it also showed me about 150 errors whithin my page!!

I was so shocked, I didnt take any chances and did the best I could to fix it. I fixed it as I learned XHTML and I was able to properly fix 6 errors. I decided to enter my site in the Opera browser once again just to see if ATLEAST one of my images would show, and I was so happy when my whole page showed the way it did in Mozilla. It doesn't look the way I intend it to but its an improvement from showing nothing! lol.

I also figured out the reason Lissa doesn't show XHTML tutorials in her site is because thats a very advanced method of HTML alone, and her site is a basic understanding of simple HTML and its elements for kids (and beginners), and once we learn all that were supposed to figure out the rest on our own.

My site isnt completely fixed the way I want it to be and I still have 144 more errors that I'm being able to fix on my own :blush:. I just wanna point out that these sites are helping me alot and it can help out anyone else's sites whos content performance is as described above :).

Helpful Links:
Go here 1st for XHTML tut - ]http://www.jemjabella.co.uk/tutorials/
Some more XHTML tutorials - http://www.w3schools.com/
Check/Validate your CSS - http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Check/Validate your HTML and XHTML - http://validator.w3.org/

:winner:

EDIT: Go here 1st for XHTML tut - http://www.jemjabella.co.uk/tutorials/

this is sooo helpful, its wierd how google, yahoo, and more! have like 200 errors... i have about 20 so thats not bad, all but like 5 i already know how to fix, and whats better? html or xhtml? which am i better off with?

again thanks, im going to save this on my comp its sooo good!

I'd say XHTML is better (in my opinion) coz with xhtml you can fix things easier and they'll show up the way you want it to in many browsers, but you can't do that with plain HTML (and trust me, I've tried!) coz it doesn't matter if it looks so good in one browser, it may look messed up in another, and u can try to fix it so that it looks good in both but you'll just be playing with the code and make it look messed up in both browsers.

You can tell if a site is done with xhtml before asking the webmaster or searching the whole site just by viewing source code and if its an xhtml document on the very top of the source it will say "<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">"

This is from http://www.w3schools.com:

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

All New Browsers Support XHTML

-XHTML is compatible with HTML 4.01.
-All new browsers have support for XHTML.

XHTML is a combination of HTML and XML (eXtensible Markup Language).

XHTML consists of all the elements in HTML 4.01 combined with the syntax of XML.

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.

you can do more things with HTML 4.01 because it is more leniant. For example, iframes don't validate with XHTML strict... but most blogging tools code in XHTML so you almost have to know XHTML nowadays to have a valid page.

why do they call it HTML 4.01? whats the difference? isn't it JUST HTML or is 4.01 and updated version? :confusion

I think the number refers more to the revision of the standard. different versions of browsers will conform to different coding standards (or some not at all, ::coughIEcough::), and number indicates which revision it is.