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We'll Miss You XHTML 2

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Sun 12 Jul 2009 at 10:44

Type

Blog Entry

Comments

5 comments

The W3C officially announced last week (2 July 2009) that they will not be renewing the charter for the XHTML 2 Working Group at the end of 2009. Their objective is to increase the resources of HTML 5, in order to accelerate the completion of the specification. I was not entirely surprised by the W3C's decision because HTML 5 has been receiving a lot of marketing buzz thanks to the big wigs at Apple and Google. All the browser makers are rushing to implement parts of the HTML 5 Working Draft, but there has not been a single attempt of an…
Best Semantic Naming Convention?

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Wed 15 Oct 2008 at 20:59

Type

Blog Entry

Comments

6 comments

Awhile back there was a great thread on SitePoint Forums about the best semantic naming convention for a typical layout shell (header, footer, content, navigation, etc.). A lot of people posted what they thought was the best semantic naming scheme, usually along these lines: <div id="header"> ... </div> <div id="sidebar"> ... </div> <div id="content"> ... </div> <div id="footer"> ... </div> Largely, this is the same semantic naming convention that I would use: heade…
POST vs. GET

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Wed 3 Sep 2008 at 20:35

Type

Blog Entry

Comments

2 comments

When I first started learning web development, I had a hard time understanding the differences between the two HTTP request methods POST and GET. Some of the early Lowter members will remember an issue with only being able to post forum posts under 2000 characters, which was a result of me accidently using GET to submit the user's posts. Matt actually spotted the issue and probably wanted to reach through the computer screen and slap me for such a naïve error. Alas, I've come quite a ways since then. Now, there is a lot of technical …
Best Markup for Semantic HTML Forms?

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Thu 21 Aug 2008 at 12:41

Type

Blog Entry

When I code a webpage, I always fret about making sure that my markup is as semantic and simple as possible. Generally, creating a semantic webpage is easy, but I have always found coding semantic HTML forms to be difficult. In the web development world, there are a few excepted formats for semantic HTML forms: tables, <div>'s, paragraphs, ordered lists, and definition lists. The challenge is that each form has its own pros and cons in relation to semantics. Foremost, the <div> element simply provides no semantic clarity for f…
Planning a Semantic Website

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Tue 15 Apr 2008 at 7:19

Type

Blog Entry

IBM just recently published a fantastic article about planning a semantic website, covering existing ways to code semantic markup. Most useful in this article is using existing technologies to make your website semantic today, without interfering with the existing experience of your users. Most useful in my opinion are microformats, which can be easily implemented; although, granted, there is little utilisation of them yet in web browsers. Also important is the semantic URI, which is certainly an issue on many websites, with these forever co…
Styling <legend> Tags

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Fri 22 Dec 2006 at 23:11

Type

Blog Entry

Recently, when coding Lowter's new layout, I ran into an issue trying to use absolute positioning on a <legend> tag. I was attempting to apply these particular styles to it: legend { left: -2000px; position: absolute; width: 990px; } I wanted to hide the <legend> tag from visitors on a certain form. Using display: none would not have sufficed because then screen-readers would have ignored the form instructions I wanted them to read aloud. The stylings worked fine in Opera, Safari, and Internet Explorer. The brow…
Working With Two Classes

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Sat 29 Oct 2005 at 18:32

Type

Blog Entry

Comments

4 comments

It is very easy to assign an element two classes, as mentioned in the Lowter article, Four Quick CSS Tips. Another neat little tip is assigning styles to an element as long as it belongs to two specific classes. First, assign the element two classes: <div class="one two">...</div> Then, use the following CSS to apply styling to an element of both classes: div.one.two { ... } These styles will only be applied to an element that is assigned both classes, one and two in this case. You can also use this metho…
CSS In HTML Emails

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Wed 14 Sep 2005 at 16:53

Type

Blog Entry

HTML emails are crippled by the lack of standard rendering across the hundreds of email clients, desktop and online. Web designers only have to deal with maybe five web browsers, at the most, but it's ten times worse when designing HTML emails. There is absolutely no standard methods to render HTML emails, and each email client does it differently. With the lack of HTML support, you'd think that CSS emails would be completely out of the question. Campaign Monitor has published an article about using CSS in HTML emails According to this…
Styling Our Heads with Meta Tags

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Wed 25 May 2005 at 15:46

Type

Article

Style up your head tags with a variety of colorful meta tags. Break your website from frames, list keywords, provide page information, and more - with just one tag! Learn a few uses of the meta tag.
Too Easy XHTML - Tables [7]

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Mon 25 Apr 2005 at 14:51

Type

Article

Finalize your XHTML knowledge by learning the basics of XHTML tables. Tables, used to describe tabular data, are a valuable asset, which Ethan touches base on here.
Accesskeys Demystified: Keyboard Navigation

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Fri 22 Apr 2005 at 17:03

Type

Article

One simple parameter and you can increase your website's accessibility three-fold. Learn the basics of accesskeys and make your website keyboard friendly!
Too Easy XHTML - Forms [6]

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Thu 14 Apr 2005 at 20:02

Type

Article

Taking user input is the first step in making a dynamic XHTML website. This is done using forms and form elements. Here Ethan shows us the basics for XHTML forms.
Too Easy XHTML - Organization with Lists [5]

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Fri 1 Apr 2005 at 10:34

Type

Article

List provide increased accessibility, usability, design, and markup organization. Continue with XHTML as Ethan explains the three basic types of list in XHTML - orderd, unordered, and defintion.
Content Negotiation

Author

Frans de Jonge

Date

Fri 1 Apr 2005 at 2:52

Type

Blog Entry

In this entry I will discuss how to use content negotiation to your advantage and offer the correct mime-type for your code to the browsers which can handle it. Last year, I only used to check the HTTP_ACCEPT header of a browser for the presence of application/xhtml+xml, which can be done easily by using: <?php if (stristr($_SERVER, 'application/xhtml+xml')) { } ?> However, conversations with others showed me that this is not the right way to do this, because if a browser adds a q value to the HTTP_ACCEPT header (like …
Too Easy XHTML - Even More Tags [4]

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Mon 21 Mar 2005 at 20:32

Type

Article

Defining important text, links, and image are valuable assets of designing web pages. Here Ethan continues our markup ventures in Part 4 of the XHTML Guide.
Too Easy XHTML - Jumping Into XHTML [3]

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Fri 18 Mar 2005 at 23:15

Type

Article

Continuing our XHTML Guide - here we learn basic XHTML tags to begin making our own webpages including incorporating JavaScript and CSS. Here Ethan takes us on our first jump into the world of XHTML!
Too Easy XHTML - XHTML Syntax [2]

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Sat 12 Mar 2005 at 23:28

Type

Article

In Part 2 of the XHTML Guide, we look further into the XHTML document structure and basic XHTML syntax of tags and attributes. Ethan continues our XHTML lessons in Part 2 - XHTML Syntax.
Too Easy XHTML - Introduction to XHTML [1]

Author

Ethan Poole

Date

Fri 11 Mar 2005 at 23:38

Type

Article

In Part 1 of the XHTML Guide, we look at what XHTML is and the basic page structure of an XHTML document. Here Ethan introduces us to the world of the eXtensible HyperText Markup Language.