Web Work
XHTML and HTML
There was an afternoon when myself and a colleague opted to try speak only in HTML. It was needlessly indulging our inner nerds but as I leaned over the desk to exclaim “I am bracket strong bracket really bracket slash strong bracket liking this bracket a href equals Starbucks dot com bracket coffee bracket slash a bracket.”
that I realised I could speak it like a second language.
My first encounter of HTML was 3.2 during a lunch hour at when I was working in Pensions in 1997. I often say that everything I know about HTML I learnt in that hour and while it is the case that since then I have built on the knowledge I picked up that day, taking in new elements and understanding fully the use of all, that the basic idea of text with a wrapper around it to tell a browser what the text is sunk in that day and continues to inform my work to this day.
I moved onto HTML4, to semantic HTML, to XHTML always keeping an idea that Hypertext Mark-Up Language was about maintaining solid and predictable code. Moving early to CSS and HTML4 rather than HTML3.2"s presentational mark-up I have handed coded near every line of code I have ever published.
Using XHTML was a natural progression — as is moving onto HTML5 where needed — and has provided websites like BfB with the solid basis to redesign without having to recode. The most complex and curious bugs and design issues can be fixed if you understand HTML and XHTML.
And I understand HTML, it is like a second language to me.