Head First HTML with CSS

standards, compliance, and all that jazz
Frank: But different browsers (say Internet Explorer versus Firefox versus
Safari) have different ways of handling imperfect HTML. In other words, if you
have mistakes in your HTML, then all bets are off in terms of how your pages
will look in different browsers. It’s only when you don’t have mistakes that most
browsers display things consistently. And when we start adding presentation to
our HTML with CSS, the differences will get even more dramatic if our HTML
isn’t up to snuff.
So, by making sure we’re, as they say, “compliant” with the “standards,” we’ll
have a lot fewer problems with our pages displaying incorrectly for our customers.
Jim: If that reduces the number of 3 a.m. calls I get, then that sounds like a
good idea to me. After all, our customers use every browser under the sun.
Joe: Wait a sec, I still don’t get it. Aren’t we compliant now? What’s wrong with
our HTML?
Frank: Maybe nothing, but there are a few things we can to do to make sure.
Joe: Like what?
Frank: Well, we can start by helping the browser a bit by telling it exactly which
version of HTML we’re using.
Joe: I’m not even sure I know which version we’re using.
Frank: Ah ha! So there is some room for improvement here. Okay, let’s begin
by figuring out which version of HTML we’re using and how we can tell the
browser about it. There are a few other things we need to do too, but don’t worry,
this isn’t a big deal. And, when we’re done, life will be much easier when we start
using CSS.
?
brain
power
Browsers all do a pretty good job of consistently displaying your pages
when you write correct HTML, but when you make mistakes or do
nonstandard things in your HTML, pages are often displayed differently
from one browser to another. Why do you think that is the case?
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