Emerging Technologies Research Activity: Gary’s Email
G’day
Look, I know you people in the IT department don’t like to be disturbed
, but the MD seems to think that you’re pretty well-informed. We’re going to need another web-developer in a months time for the Humanet 2.0 project, so I thought I’d pop this question your direction.
I’m quite familiar with HTML from my experience on the Humanet project, but oneof our web developers keeps insisting on us using XHTML rather than HTML. He’s new on the job and so I don’t want to make a big decision based on a new recruit’s insistence.
Is XHTML a new language? How does it relate to HTML and why should we use it? And what is the Document Object Model (DOM) that the newby keeps referring to? And finally, how do you keep up with your tech-information? I don’t have much time, but I want to be able to keep up with developments in the industry, especially new web-standards.
As I said, I do want to look into these things myself, but am quite busy at the moment. It would be extremely helpful if you could answer my questions and provides links so I can find out more over the weekend.
Thanks in advance,
Gary
Project Manager – Humanet
KorTech Pty. Ltd.
XHTML is not really a new language. It is basically a simplified version version of HTML that has been modified to follow XML conventions.
- Many tags that are now superfluous with the use of CSS have been removed in XHTML
- XHTML has a more consistent syntax than HTML.
- All tags must be closed, such as <p></p>. If a tag is empty (would have nothing between the opening and closing tags) such as an image tag, it has a closing slash, for example: <img src=”example.jpg” />
- Tag attributes always follow the attribute=”value” syntax. Some attributes that could be written in a shorthand fashion in HTML cannot in XHTML. For example, what used to be written as <textarea disabled> must be written as <textarea disabled=”disabled”> in XHTML.
- Tags and their attributes must be written in lower-case in XHTML. HTML allows these to be written in whatever case you like.
- In theory, XHTML should be sent to the browser as an XML application. In practice this is almost never done.
XHTML is a newer standard, it’s simpler to write and maintain than HTML and the code written for XHTML tends to be cleaner and lighter. Well written XHTML will be usable on a greater number of devices, as XHTML’s consist ant syntax means that it can interpreted by less powerful devices, such as mobile phones, which have difficulty getting HTML right.
That said, strict HTML is still a perfectly usable standard to write to, and some purists say it’s better to use HTML as XHTML should be treated as XML rather than text, and most users (read: those that use Internet Explorer) can’t use XML pages.
Using XHTML is widely regarded as the better option. Because it’s cleaner and more consistent it’s easier to write for and faster for computers to render. Because it’s based on XML it will be usable well into the future as, well, XML is in almost everything.
HTML vs XHTML Links
The DOM (Document Object Model) is a way of referring to any part of a document, such as a web page. ‘DOM Scripting’ is basically using JavaScript, although some of the techniques have changed in recent years. It uses the ‘dot syntax’: to refer to the element with the ID ‘foo’ I would use the code documet.getElementByID(’foo’), for example.
DOM Links
To keep up with new developments in the industry I follow a wide range of blogs written by high-profile web professionals. Using an ‘aggregator’ or RSS reader, ether a web-based one such as Bloglines or a small program on the computer, one can subscribe to a large number of these sites and see if there are any updates, or even read the posts without having to visit the sites individually.
Aggregator Links
Informative Web Design Sites