Clean Up Your Web Site

Create Well Formed HTML Web Sites With XHTML

HTML has been the best way to create a Web site for many years. If you want to create well formed an HTML Web site you need to follow a few simple XHTML rules to move your Web site from HTML to XHTML. Don't worry, it's not as hard as it sounds.

• Add missing end tags - Whenever you use an HTML tag you must use the corresponding end tag that goes with it.
  
  example: <p></p>; <b></b>; <li></li>


• Make sure your HTML tags nest rather than overlap - Keep your HTML tags in order.
  
  example of bad order: <p><b>this is bold</p></b>
  
  example of good order: <p><b>this is bold</b></p>


• Use double or single quotes around your attribute values.
  
  bad example: <font face=sans-serif color=white size=+1>
  
  good example: <font face="sans-serif" color="white" size="+1">


• Add values to all minimized Boolean attributes, even if they are the same name.
  
  bad example: <input type="checkbox" checked>
  
  good example: <input type="checkbox" checked="checked">


• Change &, < and > to &amp;, &lt; and &gt; -
  
  example: change "me & her" to "me &amp; her"


• Fix empty HTML elements.
  
  example:<hr> should look like <hr/> or <hr></hr>


• Use hyphens in comment tags
  
  bad comment tag: <! this is a comment>
  
  good comment tag:


• Make all element and attribute names lowercase


• Eliminate all non-standard HTML elements like marquee


• Add requited attributes like the alt attribute of img


• Move HTML elements out of out from inside elements where they don't belong like blockquote from p