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"Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards" The concept of a Microformat might be best seen as a subset of an existing technology focusing on solving a specific problem or an open source data format that can be used to solve a problem. It's hardly new - not in web terms. Microformats are a method of marking-up types of content to be easily lifted or shared with other websites or applications. For instance, the name and address of your company can have certain class names attributed to your HTML elements. These class-names can then be read by a web app, which will allow a site visitor to insert those details directly into your address book with the click of a link. Microformats are not that difficult to apply - in most cases it's just a slight modification of your HTML classes. Put in more plain English, it’s about marking up your (X)HTML with semantic and predefin...

by JEFFREY ZELDMAN You’ve done all the right stuff, but your site doesn’t look or work as it should in the latest browsers. You’ve written valid XHTML and CSS. You’ve used the W3C standard Document Object Model (DOM) to manipulate dynamic page elements. Yet, in browsers designed to support these very standards, your site is failing. A faulty DOCTYPE is likely to blame. This little article will provide you with DOCTYPEs that work, and explain the practical, real–world effect of these seemingly abstract tags. by JEFFREY ZELDMAN You’ve done all the right stuff, but your site doesn’t look or work as it should in the latest browsers. You’ve written valid XHTML and CSS. You’ve used the W3C standard Document Object Model (DOM) to manipulate dynamic page elements. Yet, in browsers designed to support these very standards, your site is failing. A faulty DOCTYPE is likely to blame. This little article will provide you with DOCTYPEs that work, and explain the practical, real–world effect of these...

Why and How to use Web Standards? 1. What are web standards? “Web standards are intended to be a common base… a foundation for the world wide web so that browsers and other software understand the same basic vocabulary“. Eric Meyer Who sets the webstandards? The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and other standards bodies have established technologies for creating and interpreting web-based content. These ‘web standards’ are carefully designed to: deliver the greatest benefits to the greatest number of web users ensure the long-term viability of any web document simplify code and lower the cost of production deliver sites that are accessible to more people and more types of Internet devices continue to function correctly as traditional desktop browsers evolve, and as new Internet devices come to market 2. The web standards Structural Languages Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) 1.0 XHTML 1.1 Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 Presentation Languages Cascading Style Sheets (CSS...

You have been working with (X)HTML and CSS for anywhere from 1-4 years. You prefer front end development because you're creative and visual and have a good eye for design . You write standards-compliant / semantic (X)HTML and CSS without Googling the syntax or using WYSIWYG editors. You understand the difference between standards mode and quirks mode . You know what the box model hack is and what versions of IE it works for. You may love Firebug because it saves your life or you are so good you don't need it. You can use Gimp, Fireworks or Photoshop to cut up images and are handy with designing an icon or two in a pinch. You are not uncomfortable working in the context of a complex Java web application even if you don't understand its intricacies. You won't get scared off by scripting markup like Velocity or JQuery showing up in the code here and there. You are a self starter who loves working with technology and you stay up late putting the finishing touches o...

Quirks Mode is a mode of operation of web browsers such as Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, and Opera. Basically, Quirks Mode (also called Compatibility Mode) means that a relatively modern browser in ten tio nal ly simulates many bugs in older browsers, especially IE 4 and IE 5. Quirks Mode is a mode of operation of web browsers such as Internet Explorer (IE), Firefox, and Opera. Basically, Quirks Mode (also called Compatibility Mode) means that a relatively modern browser in ten tio nal ly simulates many bugs in older browsers, especially IE 4 and IE 5. Quirks Mode is triggered by doctype sniffing, also known as doctype switching. This means that the browser inspects the start of an HTML document to see whether it contains a doctype declaration as required by HTML specifications. The purpose of Quirks Mode is to make old pages to display as their author intended. Old pages may have been written to utilize known features of old browsers or at least to adapt to them. For more informat...

Users don’t read, they scan. In fact, after many years, reading online still didn’t manage to assert itself against reading offline. Therefore long articles are usually printed out and read on paper. However, not every page will be printed out correctly by default - sometimes layout doesn’t fit, sometimes font size isn’t chosen properly or leading simply isn’t big enough. It is also important to include some further references to the printed version of the page, so users can get back to you, once they’ve read the printed version of your article. Good news: web-developers can control the way web-site looks on the paper.To make sure that no data will lost and the legibility of content remains optimal after the printing, you can, of course, use CSS. There are many options and techniques you can use developing print layouts. Here is a quick overview of some interesting solutions you can use to generate print layouts “on the fly”. Printing the Web: CSS-Techniques Five Simple Steps to Typese...