A great sea change has taken place in web development in the last six or seven years (and since the last edition of this book). Standards compliance is the name of the game in web design these days. After years of browser competition, HTML hacking, and other practices born out of the lack of guiding principles, we are all finally recognizing the benefits of abiding by the rules. That means using clean and logical HTML or XHTML for marking up content, Cascading Style Sheets for all matters of presentation, and a single Document Object Model for scripting.
As of this writing, we are still in a period of transition. New approaches need to be learned; old habits need to be shaken. Eventually, standards -based design will be second nature. The good news is that the developers of the tools we use to view and create web pages are making strides toward full standards support. With everyone on the same page, web production has the potential to be more efficient, less costly, and forward compatible.
This chapter introduces the current web standards and the way they impact web design.
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