Web Quality - Standards

Writing your pages according to web standards helps improve the quality of your website.

HTML Standards

XHTML is the latest HTML standard, which is a reformulation of HTML 4.01 in XML.

Writing pages according to HTML 4.01 can make your site as close as possible to the XHTML standard.

Read more about HTML.

CSS Standards

For high-quality sites, using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the preferred way to separate content from style. By using CSS, you can store all information about page styles in a single document.

All modern web browsers support CSS 1 and CSS 2 standards.

Using CSS can improve the quality of your website and enhance readability for different browsers. It can also significantly reduce your website development costs.

Read more about CSS.

Web Validation

Web validation tools are software programs that check your website against web standards.

After you have checked your HTML, XHTML, or CSS documents with a validation tool, the validator returns a list of errors found according to the standard you selected. Typically, the validator returns the line numbers of the errors found.

Ensure that you validate your pages before publishing them as a habit.

Read more about Page Validation.

WAI - Web Accessibility Initiative

WAI stands for Web Accessibility Initiative, launched by W3C.

WAI coordinates global organizations to enhance internet usability through six main areas of work: technology, guidelines, tools, education, research, and development.

By writing pages according to WAI guidelines, you can improve the quality of your website and make your site accessible to more people (and browsers).

You will learn more about WAI in later sections of this tutorial.