XHTML in a Nutshell
  1. What is XHTML?
  2. Rules, Rules, Rules
  3. Ditch the deprecated tags

XHTML in a Nutshell

Page 3

Ditch the deprecated tags

Deprecated tags are outdated and obsolete tags such as font and center, which will function, but whose use is discouraged. The font tag has been replaced by css, which gives a much greater degree of control over text font, size, and positioning. The center tag as well as the align attribute have also been deprecated in favor of css.

Other deprecated tags include i,u, and s, which all specify effects that can easily be accomplished via css.

There has been a bit of debate amongst web developers about the usage of <b> vs <strong> and <i> vs <em>. The basis for the debate lies in the fact that <i> and <b> are presentational tags, indicating italic and bold, whereas <em> and <strong> are structural tags, indicating emphasis and strong emphasis. The growing trend in web design is to separate content from presentation by placing all presentational elements into cascading stylesheets, therefore I've begun to use <em> and <strong> rather than <i> and <b>. There is no correct way, and a designer must certainly take into account the fact that <em> is generally rendered as italic text and <strong> is generally rendered as bold text, but hopefully this insight gives you something to consider.

So Now what?

So now, go start coding! Use well-formed XHTML. Validate your pages. Drop those font tags. And have fun.