All web developers should familiarize themselves with the State's Web Style Guide and related documents such as the Web Privacy Policy and the Internet Security Policies. The Web Style Guide states that "all pages must comply with the current version of Priority 1 Guidelines established by the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines." The current assessibility standard is the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. Web developers can also comply with the federal government's Section 508 web standard.
In addition to NDOT coding standards, web page HTML coding shall conform to W3C technologies and be tested/certified to the technology followed. The minimum coding standards which MUST be adhered to is the HTML 4.01 specification. HTML coding can also conform with XHTML 1.0 or the latest coding standard defined by the W3C. Style sheets shall at a minimum conform to the W3C's level 1 standard for cascading style sheets.
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 on HTML
- XHTML is HTML defined as an XML application
XHTML is a reformulation of HTML 4.01 as an XML application. XHTML is designed to replace HTML. There will be no HTML 5.0. Coding in XHTML ensures that you maintain your coding skills, and it maximizes the possibility that your work will be rendered the same across browsers. XHTML works on most existing HTML browsers as well as on XML systems, so you can switch to XML without excluding anyone or waiting for XML-based browsers to become more prevalent.
XHTML 1.0 became an official W3C Recommendation January 26, 2000. A W3C Recommendation means that the specifrication is stable, that it has been reviewed by the W3C membership, and that the specification is now a Web standard.
Why XHTML?
Today's market consists of different browser technologies, some browsers run on computers, and some browsers run on mobile phones, hand-helds, etc. The last-mentioned do not have the resources or power to interpret a "bad" markup language. For instance, the following "bad" markup will render fine in most browsers.
<html>
<head>
<title>This is bad HTML</title>
<body>
<h1>Bad HTML
</body>
XHTML pages can be read by all XML enabled devices AND gives you the opportunity to write "well-formed" documents now, that work in browsers that do not support XML.
