Coding to HTML's 4.0 'Strict' Definition

Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2003 4:47 pm (21 years ago)

Am thinking of answering a freelancer ad where one requirement is:

"Must be able to write code according to HTML 4.01 W3C strict standards."

I tried using 'strict' back when HTML 4 was introduced and first allowed for it, but quickly abandoned it because browser support for CSS back then pretty much seemed to force you to write separate browser-specific code for MSIE and NN if you were going to use 'strict.' At least that's how I remember it now in hindsight. Wink

Anyway, I did go through the drill of recoding and validating several large pages for it.

These days I usually code for XHTML in 'standards-compliant' mode, validating my code at the W3C, and rarely use deprecated elements like <FONT>, <BASEFONT>, or <CENTER>. I've gotten used to working around a bunch of the quirks of standards-compliant mode (although it always strikes me as quirky how Netscape 6/7 and MSIE 6 each have their own completely separate compliancy quirks not shared by each other Cool

), and am wondering what and how many other major quirks I might not've been exposed to yet.

Does that sound very close to meeting the ad's qualification?

What kind of other stuff might I be missing?

Team Member Joined: 06 Jan 2002 Posts: 2564

There are a few other deprecated tags: applet, dir, menu, strike, u (this one is still quite common though), isindex. I think you get the idea though - I doubt you use any of these deprecated tags (I never have used most of them at all).

Just wondering, what kind of person placed this ad? Someone with advanced technical knowledge? Given the fact that I don't know anything about this ad, it's hard to judge, but wouldn't this person go with Transitional instead? It's also wierd they're not asking for XHTML... Confused

Posted: Wed Apr 16, 2003 8:08 pm (21 years ago)

Daniel wrote:

There are a few other deprecated tags: applet, dir, menu, strike, u (this one is still quite common though...)...

yeah, i feel the same way about <u /> -- i'll miss that little bugger, which's been around since v. 1.0 :snief:

Daniel wrote:

...Just wondering, what kind of person placed this ad? Someone with advanced technical knowledge? Given the fact that I don't know anything about this ad, it's hard to judge, but wouldn't this person go with Transitional instead? It's also wierd they're not asking for XHTML... Confused

My best guess's that they're running into problems with some of the 'compliancy quirks' I mentioned above.

Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2003 2:56 pm (20 years, 12 months ago)

It is more than likely they actually wanted an individual who could hand-code correctly in notepad rather than a WYSINWYG Monkey. Although HTML 4.01 is very antiquated and XHTML 1.1 is far superior to the early mainstream XHTML 1.0 Flavours, albeit if you want to support the archaic version 4.x browsers you may find out that they may have issues if you ever use the 'id' attribute.

Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 3:06 am (20 years, 12 months ago)

RW, you may well be right about the WYSIWYHYG (mine is, 'What You Hope You'll Get' Wink

), as that's what most ads seem to really be aiming for, although there was a sort of emphasis in the rest of the description on being able to do Photoshop slicing, which made me think it might go beyond just the hand-coding. Smile

So far, my inquiry to them's only gotten a form-style reply, so I still don't have much to go on. Sad

What kind of issues do you run into using the ID tag? Do they mostly involve poor support for doing DHTML? And what kind of pages are you using XHTML 1.1 DTD on now?

Posted: Wed Apr 23, 2003 12:38 pm (20 years, 12 months ago)

Netscape 4.7x is the prime example of an old browser, which might have issues with 'id' attribute for various elements mostly concerned with the forms thus the 'name' attribute may me needed in certain instances, which in XHTML terms means use Transitional, in that case.

To answer your question where I use XHTML 1.1 and XHTML Basic 1.0 the most is here: http://www.xhtmlcoder.com/worthvalley/