Here are some tips on making an html page xhtml compliant.
- Include a proper doctype
- A doctype is the first line of code in a web page that tells the browser the file type. Here are two xhtml doctypes, strict and transitional:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
- Close all tags
- With HTML, you can get away with tags like <img ...> and <br>. With XHTML, you must close these tags as follows: <img ... /> and <br />. In general, make sure every start tag has an end tag.
- Remove deprecated tags
- Many tags can be replaced with css, such as <center> and <font color=red>. Use <div style='text-align:center'> or <span style='color:red;'> instead.
- Remove deprecated attributes
- As with tags, many attributes can be replaced with css.
Replace <img width=500 height=300 border=0 /> with <img style='width:500px; height:300px; border:0px;' />
- Include required attributes
- XHTML is very strict when it comes to attributes. Some are forbidden (width, height) and some are required (alt). The required attribute that most comes to mind is the alt tag for images. If you don't have one, your site won't validate.
- Use tables correctly
- Tables have one purpose and one purpose only, to display tabular data. You wouldn't use Excel to layout a webpage, why use tables?
This is the hardest part to change if you're currently using a table for your site layout, seeing how at least half of your code is <tr> and <td> tags. It's often best to start from scratch with <div> tags.
These were off the top of my head, so I'm sure I missed a bunch of things. W3's site has a good XHTML validator that provides useful feedback. Give it a try at http://validator.w3.org/
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