Summary

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HTML is the markup language for building Web pages and traditionally has combined physical and logical structuring ideas. Elements ”in the form of tags such as <b> and </b> ”are embedded within text documents to indicate to browsers how to render pages. The rules for HTML are fairly simple. Unfortunately, these rules have not been enforced by browsers in the past. Because of this looseness, there has been a great deal of misunderstanding about the purpose of HTML, and a good portion of the documents on the Web do not conform to any particular official specification of HTML. The introduction of XHTML attempts to return HTML to its roots as a structural language, leaving presentational duties to other technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets. XHTML also attempts to introduce the required rigor and enforcement of syntax that will make HTML a solid foundation on which to build tomorrow's Web applications. While heavy use of strict XHTML has yet to occur on the Web, document authors following the rules presented, even those using classic HTML, should be well suited to make the transition to perfectly formed documents. Before plunging in to the core elements of HTML, we'll take a look at Web development practices and project planning useful to aspiring HTML document authors.

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