Changing from transitional to strict

[beary]

Hello all,

About 10 years ago I started realising how logical the structure of html was and began making pages. They were horrible. I'm glad I didn't try to validate them as I would have broken all known records for errors. In the last couple of years I took it up again and have come to see the importance of writing clean code and validating it. So I spent some time on one of my sites fixing all the errors on one particular page, until it validated transitional. Which was a nice feeling!

Now I realise that validating transitional is better than not validating, but that ideally I want to aim for strict. So I'm currently teaching myself css properly, instead of using snippets and not understanding it. My questions are:

1) What changes do I need to make to take my pages from transitional to strict? (Please don't direct me to the main w3.org site. It's not at all clear in my opinion.) Either a list of things, or a link to a helpful and clear page on it would be great.

2) I've just started teaching my nearly 10 year old html. Do you think it's a good idea to start her off using css as well as html? Or just stick with html even though some of the elements or attributes may be depreciated?

Many thanks for any answers

[hsriat]

1) What changes do I need to make to take my pages from transitional to strict? (Please don't direct me to the main w3.org site. It's not at all clear in my opinion.) Either a list of things, or a link to a helpful and clear page on it would be great.

There are some attributes and tags which are only allowed in transitional. For example, height, align, target are not allowed in Strict. So if you really need to use them, use transitional. OR, use their CSS substitute.
I too started with untidy HTML, and then shifted to standard. But for few of the pages, I could only convert them to transitional as I could not find any way out in CSS to validate them as strict.
If you just want to know whether a tag is allowed or not, see this page (XHTML1.0 only).
Else (which you recommended not to tell you) is that you can use w3c's validator. It performs a tidy thing if you check that option.

But on the pages where I use intense DHTML, I find it really difficulty to validate it. But I make sure, it validates with HTML SYSTEM.

Apart from this, Google, Yahoo people don't care for the validation.

2) I've just started teaching my nearly 10 year old html. Do you think it's a good idea to start her off using css as well as html? Or just stick with html even though some of the elements or attributes may be depreciated?

Many thanks for any answers

I would recommend you teach her HTML first. Once done, let her know the limitations in layout and looks while using HTML alone. Then teach her CSS. But don't forget CSS.

[beary]

Aah. That's good stuff hsriat, particularly the w3schools link. Thanks a lot.

[hsriat]

Aah. That's good stuff hsriat, particularly the w3schools link. Thanks a lot.

You are welcome. :)

I knew you actually needed that link only, but I just needed to say my stuff to someone. :D