(X)HTML

HTML and XHTML are the markup languages used to create a solid foundation for your website or web application, and articles in this category generally touch upon the semantics and accessibility aspects of marking up web pages.

JavaScript-created markup also needs to be semantic and accessible

Browsers, assistive technology and end users have to deal with non-semantic markup even if it is inserted by JavaScript functions.

Posted on November 10, 2011

Using display:table has semantic effects in some screen readers

When you use the table-related display properties of CSS to get the display properties of a table, some screen readers will treat the non-table markup as a real table.

Posted on October 11, 2011

Adaptive Web Design (Book review)

In this brief and easy-to-read book, Aaron Gustafson does an excellent job of explaining what progressive enhancement is and how to apply it in your daily work.

Posted on June 17, 2011

Enterprise HTML, CSS and JavaScript explained

Explanations of why some of the bad practices that are made fun of at the Enterprise CSS/HTML/JS sites are bad practices.

Posted on February 3, 2011

Tips for creating enterprise-level HTML, CSS and JavaScript

A set of sites making fun of worst practice front-end code commonly found on enterprise type sites and in large content management systems.

Posted on November 11, 2010

“Inspect element” is not the same as “View source”

Using a developer tool like Firebug, Web Inspector or Dragonfly to view an HTML documents DOM is not the same as viewing source.

Posted on September 30, 2010

Validation matters

Many kinds of validation errors do not effect the end result at all. But in almost all cases neither does correcting those errors, so there is no point in not doing so.

Posted on September 27, 2010

A good CMS gives you total markup freedom

If you have to hack core files or use regular expressions and output buffers to get your CMS to output the HTML you want, something is wrong with the CMS.

Posted on September 21, 2010

If you use the accesskey attribute, specify unique values

If you use the accesskey attribute and specify the same value more than once, browser behaviour is unspecified and varies a lot. Make sure values are unique if you use accesskey.

Posted on May 26, 2010

Void (empty) elements and self-closing start tags in HTML

Two types of mistakes that I see every now and then are using end tags on void elements and using self-closing start tags on elements that can have content.

Posted on May 20, 2010

Using the lang attribute makes a difference

Specifying the natural language of complete and partial HTML documents really does make a difference to users of screen readers that support language switching.

Posted on April 5, 2010

IE9 Platform Preview available

A platform preview of Internet Explorer 9 is now available for download. News include better performance and improved support for HTML5, CSS3, DOM, SVG, and XHTML.

Posted on March 16, 2010

Seven HTML related working drafts published

HTML5, HTML: The Markup Language, HTML5 differences from HTML4, HTML+RDFa, HTML Microdata, HTML Canvas 2D Context, and Additional Requirements for Bidi in HTML.

Posted on March 8, 2010

XHTML Media Types Working Group Note updated

The W3C XHTML Media Types Note now includes compatibility guidelines and allows XHTML 1.1 documents to be served as text/html provided that they conform to those guidelines.

Posted on January 29, 2010

Embedding video files without JavaScript

A method for embedding video files with the HTML 5 video element, QuickTime or Flash that does not require JavaScript.

Posted on January 25, 2010

XHTML 1.0 helped improve the Web

Jeffrey Zeldman on how the stricter and clearer rules of XHTML 1.0 made many web professionals improve their markup.

Posted on November 30, 2009

CSSquirrel makes comics out of hot topics

At cssquirrel.com, Kyle Weems turns hot web related topics into enjoyable comics that should make a lot of web geeks smile.

Posted on November 24, 2009

Headings and document structure conclusions

There appears to be no single solution to heading structure in HTML that fits all situations, but as I see it there are two choices.

Posted on November 10, 2009

Use the th element to specify row and column headers in data tables

When creating data tables in HTML, make sure to mark up the table structure properly, using the relevant elements and attributes available in HTML.

Posted on October 28, 2009

Use the optgroup element to group select options

When grouping the options of a select element, you can use the optgroup element with a label attribute instead of faking the groups with option elements.

Posted on October 5, 2009

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