XHTML
All HTML pages created by UW-L web developers should be compliant with the XHTML 1.0 Transitional standard. There are many benefits to using this standard, the most important being that modern web browsers are being written to XHTML 1.0. Conforming to this standard ensures a long shelf-life for your website. Some highlights of XHTML 1.0 include:
- All HTML tags must be closed. Include a space before the trailing ⁄ and > of singular elements, e.g. <br ⁄>, <hr ⁄>, and <img src="dog.jpg" alt="Rover" ⁄>.
- Keep all tags and their attributes in lower case.
- All attributes within tags must be enclosed by quotation marks.
The full specification for this standard is available at the W3 Consortium. A concise set of guidelines is also available.
CSS
Wherever possible, UW-L web developers should try to employ Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) extensively, as CSS coding currently allows the most promising method of separating content from presentation.
Separating content from presentation makes a website immediately accessible as those with disabilities may choose to apply an alternative style sheet that best meets their needs. This separation also prepares your site for non-standard web viewers such as cellphones and PDAs. Ideally, the entire stylesheet definition should be encapsulated with one or more "link" tags that reference external stylesheet files (typically files ending with the extension ".css").
As a rule, web developers should consider using relative sizing for font sizes ("em"s, percentages, etc.), so that users may effectively change font sizes on their browsers. In addition, developers should ensure that any "font-family" definitions use a very robust list of font families, to ensure broad compatability across browsers and platforms.
An excellent reference point for CSS issues and tutorials is the W3C’s forum on "Learning Cascading Style Sheets."
