“Test your knowledge of HTML! This includes only HTML 4 Elements defined by the W3C. (Sorry, no blink or marquee tags).” (Thanks Jon!)

“We look at a lot of Ajax applications, and we have seen a lot of trends over the last couple of years. In general we are maturing, but as complexity has gone up in Ajax applications we are seeing one scary trend. The first set of apps simply added some <script> that did some happy XMLHttpRequest dancing. Then we abstracted to libraries such as Dojo and Prototype. Then people tried to do the right thing and use unobtrusive JavaScript where we keep the HTMl structure separate from the code. We would all like to see more of this. Unfortunately, we are starting to see Ajax applications that look more like Flash web pages…” (Thanks SuccessForce!)

btw, you can see some work XPLANE has been doing for Salesforce over at the Successforce blog.

“A JavaScript class for dynamically striping HTML data tables.”

“You’d think that as a result of open-source development practices, blog architectures would be pretty close to perfection in areas like Web standards and maximum SEO impact.

You’d be wrong.

Unbelievably, nearly every WordPress, MovableType, or TypePad theme that I’ve come across in the past year fails a simple test for truly semantic (and Google-recommended) XHTML markup. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that these failures are by no means fatal flaws. At the same time, though, I find it extremely unsettling that an inferior markup structure is prevailing in the face of an absolutely correct way of doing things.”

“If you’re a web developer, you’ve probably heard about XHTML, the markup language developed in 1999 to implement HTML as an XML format. Most people who use and promote XHTML do so because they think it’s the newest and hottest thing, and they may have heard of some (usually false) benefits here and there. But there is a lot more to it than you may realize, and if you’re using it on your website, even if it validates, you are probably using it incorrectly. I should make it clear that I hope XHTML has a bright future on the Web.”

“Have you ever watched your status bar while you wait for a page to load and wondered why several files seem to be downloaded before you see anything at all on your screen? Eventually the page content displays, and then the images are slotted in. The files that keep you waiting are generally the CSS and Javascript files linked to from the ‘head’ section of the HTML document. Because these files determine how the page will be displayed, rendering is delayed until they are completely downloaded.”

“In the time it took the closed and secretive XHTML working group to release a new version of this specification which did not fix one of its simplest problems despite that problem being reported multiple times, the open and transparent WHAT working group wrote an entire HTML specification, more detailed than any previous such effort, and fixed the problem in the process.” (Thanks Daring Fireball!)

“Why does it matter which form of encoding we choose? What happens if we choose the ‘wrong’ one? The choice of character encoding affects the range of literal characters we can use in a web page. Regular Latin letters are rarely a problem, but some languages need more letters than others, and some languages need various diacritical marks above or below the letters. Then, of course, some languages don’t use Latin letters at all. If we want proper — as in typographically correct — punctuation and special symbols, the choice of encoding also becomes more critical.”

“Old tags never die. They just go to Hell and regroup. At ObscureTags.com. This page contains absolutely no CSS because CSS is dumb.”

“This is a list of HTML elements I’ve found to be very poorly represented in most markup on the web today. Many of these elements offer more semantic value than actual functionality, but with the rising popularity of CSS driven design where HTML elements are used for what they were actually intended for, I felt shining a little light on them was appropriate.”

“Begin typing and it will render as you type. Click the css tab to alter the style sheet.”

“An experiment in replicating Flickr-like capability, or, imitation is the highest form of flattery. My favorite feature of the Flickr photo sharing service is the ability to annotate sections of a photo, like I did with a screenshot of my PC desktop. (Mouse over that picture and you’ll see what I mean.) This is very cool, and I don’t want you to have to click through to Flickr to see it. I want to be able to annotate my own photos here on Scribbling.net.”

“Yesterday morning, I saw via somebodyís feed (most likely either Matt or Simon) that Rakesh Pai has published a piece called ‘The Economics of XHTML’, in which he explores and summarizes many points in favor of moving to XHTML.”

“Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).”

“Most people have encountered truly ‘bratty’ Web pages in their Websurfing careers†ó misbehaving pages that cause browser errors ranging from an abrupt termination to a complete system lockup. Almost invariably, these ill-behaved pages contain embedded HTML errors, or else they make extensive use of non-standard, browser-specific, quasi-HTML syntax. Regular and consistent use of HTML validators helps to identify and eliminate the embedded HTML errors that make for a bratty Web page.”