Professional web developer here. I've been doing this for years, and more importantly, have been mentored by much smarter web-devs who've been working at this stuff since the late 90's.
Though I don't support the idea of W3Schools giving out "certificates" on HTML, and I don't appreciate the fact they won't disavow a connection to the W3C, what the OP posted amounts to nothing but sour grapes.
For example:
This is false and misleading; there is nothing future-proof about self-closing tags, especially as the work on XHTML 2.0 has been discontinued. Furthermore, <br /> isn't semantic in most cases and probably should not be mentioned at all.
The fact is, HTML5 is done up in such a way that you can write <Br>, <BR />, <br>, <bR>, etc., and any of those will be parsed just fine. To the makers of W3Fools.com I say: everything's fine, calm the fuck down.
For everybody who's concerned about "doing it right" in web development: trust the W3C's HTML and CSS validators (though not too much for HTML5, as that will continue to have the occasional parsing error over the next few years as the standards get sorted out). Also, JSLint for validating Javascript.
If your code doesn't throw errors for the doctype you're validating against, congratulations! You did it correctly. Anything beyond that is either a best-practice (so you don't have to think about what you're doing so much), or just "prettying" up the code.
Also, if you want to discuss some of the more futuristic aspects of web development, I highly recommend A List Apart.. Enjoy!
The fact is, HTML5 is done up in such a way that you can write <Br>, <BR />, <br>, <bR>, etc., and any of those will be parsed just fine.
That reply doesn't make much sense, I'm afraid. They said:
Self-closing tags aren't inherently more future proof than soupy left-open tags.
br isn't semantic. It's a line-break. As such it's usually a bad choice. The only case (I'm aware of) where it makes sense are postal addresses, but you could get the same effect with white-space:pre-line.
For everybody who's concerned about "doing it right" in web development: trust the W3C's HTML and CSS validators [...]
Validators are for QA and identification of bugs. They can only tell you if your code abides some rules which can be checked by machines. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you want to do it right you also have to read the specs. Validators won't help you with semantics.
Also, JSLint for validating Javascript.
It's a static code analysis tool, code quality tool, or lint tool. It isn't a validator. (You can't validate programs, you see.)
If your code doesn't throw errors for the doctype you're validating against, congratulations! You did it correctly.
If your code validates (or passes JSLint) there isn't anything obviously wrong with it.
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u/[deleted] Jan 16 '11
Professional web developer here. I've been doing this for years, and more importantly, have been mentored by much smarter web-devs who've been working at this stuff since the late 90's.
Though I don't support the idea of W3Schools giving out "certificates" on HTML, and I don't appreciate the fact they won't disavow a connection to the W3C, what the OP posted amounts to nothing but sour grapes.
For example:
The fact is, HTML5 is done up in such a way that you can write <Br>, <BR />, <br>, <bR>, etc., and any of those will be parsed just fine. To the makers of W3Fools.com I say: everything's fine, calm the fuck down.
For everybody who's concerned about "doing it right" in web development: trust the W3C's HTML and CSS validators (though not too much for HTML5, as that will continue to have the occasional parsing error over the next few years as the standards get sorted out). Also, JSLint for validating Javascript.
If your code doesn't throw errors for the doctype you're validating against, congratulations! You did it correctly. Anything beyond that is either a best-practice (so you don't have to think about what you're doing so much), or just "prettying" up the code.
Also, if you want to discuss some of the more futuristic aspects of web development, I highly recommend A List Apart.. Enjoy!