(X)HTML

[robinturner]

I decided that it was high time I started writing pages in XHTML, so went to the W3C website to look for a tutorial. However, while clicking around, I got distracted by the HTML quiz. To my shame, I only scored 15/20! In my defence, I can say that of the questions I got wrong,

• one was about making a page open in a new window, which is something I consider to be almost as bad as popups;
• one was about table layout, which I always handle in CSS;
• the other three were about forms, which I always do with CGI.pm.

So enough of that crap, I'm off to learn some XHTML.

Update: Scored 20/20 on the XHTML quiz!

Comments

[alsoname.livejournal.com]

Haha, I scored 14/20 on the HTML quiz. Mostly because I guessed on all those questions about forms. They also said I missed the question about opening pages in new windows, which shocked me because the way I answered is the way I've always done it. I wonder what the "right" answer is?!

Not that I use that tag anymore; in fact, I'm trying to phase it out.

[b0rg.livejournal.com]

I wonder what so important about XHTML and what would be the difference from HTML? Apart from "xhtml is a well formed xml so you'd write"
<br />&lt;br /&gt; instead of &lt;br&gt;??<br />

What is CGI.pm?

I myself find that typing html is usually faster, esp if you have a good text editor with macros.

[solri.livejournal.com]

There was less of a difference than I'd expected - it's basically just tidied-up HTML which forces writers to adopt good web design habits. It does, however, mean that it's a subset of XML, which is good for compatibility with other XML formats, I suppose.

I also prefer to write my HTML raw - I usually use Quanta. Occasionally I write in something else, like LyX, and export as HTML (particularly useful if I also want another format, like PostScript or PDF).

CGI.pm is a Perl module which makes writing things like online forms a lot easier. For example, here's a line to make and process a textfield:

print $query->textfield(-name=>'email_address',
	                    -size=>20,
	                    -maxlength=>20);

[b0rg.livejournal.com]

Heh, there are a lot of unfamiliar names for me, a windows type of guy...

And I've messed up 'code' and 'xmp' tags... shame on me...

[firelegend.livejournal.com]

i got 18/20 on the HTML i am sure i got some of the form ones wrong.. i hate forms!

[lordsauron.livejournal.com]

Ahhh...good ol' perl. I remember thee. Pathologically Eclectic Rubbish Lister as Mr. Wall put it.

Have you tried PHP? C-like structure with a pinch of perl and javascript thrown it. But it is very very good.

BTW, I'm a friend of kesey.

[solri.livejournal.com]

I got into Perl because I needed to write a console program to do concordancing on a corpus of student essays - my brother (who unlike me is a real programmer) recommend it as the best language for dealing with text (it's now online (http://lists.bilkent.edu.tr/~robin/cgibin/concord.cgi) - code available at Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/perlconc)). Later, I needed to do some web-based apps, so dredged up my Perl knowledge.

PHP looks good, I've just never had time to learn it.