Coding Languages?
- Thread starter rjensen11
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GilesGuthrie
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- CMDRTheDarkLord
What about ASP, PHP, JSP, ColdFusion? Would you like me to edit the poll for you?
It's not listed, though.
GilesGuthrie
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- CMDRTheDarkLord
Poll closed for editing...
GilesGuthrie
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Poll reopened...
GilesGuthrie
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I guess the poll should be multi-choice then, because I'm using HTML, PHP and CSS.
Sage
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Well, it's not that you can or can't do things in either...
XHTML is simply a stricter language, because it's based on all of the rules that make up XML, which means that all properties need to be in quotes (in regular HTML, you can get away with things like color=red, but in XHTML you have to do color="red". Also, all things in XHTML (and XML) have to have closing tags, even if they're single tag elements. In regular HTML, you can just do this:
<p>Here's the start of a paragraph.
<p>Oh! Here's another!
While in XHTML, you have to put closing tags...
<p>Here's paragraph one.</p>
<p>And here's the second.</p>
For things like the img and break tags, you put a space and a forward slash, like so:
<br /> (instead of: <br>)
In XHTML documents, you need a doctype title that tells the browser exactly how you're coding your webpage. For example, my doctype says:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
The stuff that's highlighted is the important stuff... telling the browser that my page is XHTML 1.0 (1.1 was just released some time ago) Transitional. It's "transitional", because I have some table elements that still rely on older HTML code that isn't valid with XHTML Strict, such as...
<td color="123456">
... the color property is no longer part of the XHTML Strict specifications (instead, you need to use CSS).
Basically, the whole point of XHTML is to make cleaner code that is easier for browsers to interpret, increase standards compliance, and to also make a shift to CSS for both formatting and layout. HTML is not supposed to be a structuring language, but it was unintentionally made so... and so now the W3C wants people to move to CSS for full control of layout and formatting, and to use HTML only for the content.
XHTML is simply a stricter language, because it's based on all of the rules that make up XML, which means that all properties need to be in quotes (in regular HTML, you can get away with things like color=red, but in XHTML you have to do color="red". Also, all things in XHTML (and XML) have to have closing tags, even if they're single tag elements. In regular HTML, you can just do this:
<p>Here's the start of a paragraph.
<p>Oh! Here's another!
While in XHTML, you have to put closing tags...
<p>Here's paragraph one.</p>
<p>And here's the second.</p>
For things like the img and break tags, you put a space and a forward slash, like so:
<br /> (instead of: <br>)
In XHTML documents, you need a doctype title that tells the browser exactly how you're coding your webpage. For example, my doctype says:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
The stuff that's highlighted is the important stuff... telling the browser that my page is XHTML 1.0 (1.1 was just released some time ago) Transitional. It's "transitional", because I have some table elements that still rely on older HTML code that isn't valid with XHTML Strict, such as...
<td color="123456">
... the color property is no longer part of the XHTML Strict specifications (instead, you need to use CSS).
Basically, the whole point of XHTML is to make cleaner code that is easier for browsers to interpret, increase standards compliance, and to also make a shift to CSS for both formatting and layout. HTML is not supposed to be a structuring language, but it was unintentionally made so... and so now the W3C wants people to move to CSS for full control of layout and formatting, and to use HTML only for the content.
The most important thing about XHTML, and I totally forgot to mention it... Good catch! 👍Super-Supra
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HTML For Me.
Sage
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Ah, I also used to think that Dreamweaver sucks, but damn, it was worth every pretty penny I paid for it. You also do realize that there is WYSIWYG view, coding view, and a split-window WYSIWYG/coding view? (Which is what I personaly use). Trust me on this: Dreamweaver kicks major booty. Not only does it make coding easier, but its automation tricks are so time-saving... for example, if you move an image file to a different subdirectory and have 20 files linking to that image file, it would take forever to replace all of the links, but Dreamweaver does it 100% automagically. Both Giles and I agree that Dreamweaver and Fireworks are quite possibly the two best pieces of software on the market right now.
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Yeah, Dreamweaver has a coding view as well. I use the coding view more than anything. I just use the WYSIWYG View mode to preview what I have coded. Dreamweaver can also clean up your XHTML/HTML as well as Word HTML. The Clean Up X/HTML option is good because it also finds errors in your code.
Fireworks? Isn't that the same as Adobe Image Ready only that it's integrated with Dreamweaver?
Anyway, I don't use those Web Graphics programs. I use Photoshop for all my graphics, Dreamweaver for coding and Flash for animations.
GilesGuthrie
Staff Emeritus
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Yup.
All my pages are PHP nowadays. I tend to use the WYSIWYG editor to lay out the page structure, and then the code view to write the PHP. I almost never use DW's automated coding functions, because I need to customise them.
I use the split-screen view most of the time, if for no reason other than because you can click on an area in the design view, and it will shift the cursor to the relevant portion of the code view.
Sage only likes DW because it writes all his beloved CSS for him
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