Maybe I should also suggest that we all move to XML. Once that is done, the world will change again! You ain't seen nothing yet! Watch this space for some interesting stuff in this area!!
Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY;
As a foolowup to Henry's comment about XML, I know little about XML personally but readers may find the following useful and it might be useful to change a few bad habits when writing HTML that we all have (well, that I have anyway). HTML is looking to be redefined in terms of XML. See: http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/#future http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Activity.html and in particular http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-html-in-xml/ This should not cause panic but in order to make the transition easier there are some things that you can start doing *now*. In particular change to lower case for *all* tags and attributes. So <h1> not <H1>. Always terminate elements: so <p>....</p> (you must include </p>. Always use </li> at end of <li> elements. Always use quotes for attributes: so height="20" not height=20. To quote a few key points from the 3rd URL: "Due to the fact that XHTML is an XML application, certain practices that were perfectly legal in SGML-based HTML 4.0 [HTML] must be changed. 4.1 New Requirements 4.1.1 Documents must be well-formed. Well-formedness is a new concept introduced by [XML]. Essentially this means that all elements must either have closing tags or be written in a special form (as described below), and that all the elements must nest. Although overlapping is illegal in SGML, it was widely tolerated in SGML-based browsers. CORRECT: nested elements. <p>here is an emphasized <em>paragraph</em>.</p> INCORRECT: overlapping elements <p>here is an emphasized <em>paragraph.</p></em> 4.1.2 Element and attribute names must be in lower case. XHTML documents must use lower case for all HTML element and attribute names. This difference is necessary because XML is case-sensitive e.g. <li> and <LI> are considered to be different tags. 4.1.3 For non-empty elements, end tags are required. In SGML-based HTML 4.0 certain elements were permitted to omit the end tag; with the elements that followed implying closure. This omission is not permitted in XML-based XHTML. All elements other than those declared in the DTD as EMPTY must have an end tag. CORRECT: terminated elements <p>here is a paragraph.</p><p>here is another paragraph.</p> INCORRECT: unterminated elements <p>here is a paragraph.<p>here is another paragraph. 4.1.4 Attribute values must always be quoted. All attribute values must be quoted, even those which appear to be numeric. CORRECT: quoted attribute values <table rows="3"> INCORRECT: unquoted attribute values <table rows=3> 4.1.5 Attribute Minimization XML does not support attribute minimization. Attribute-value pairs must be written in full. Attribute names such as compact and checked cannot occur in elements without their value being specified. CORRECT: unminimized attributes <dl compact="compact"> INCORRECT: minimized attributes <dl compact> 4.1.6 Empty Elements Empty elements must end with />. For instance, <br /> or <hr />. CORRECT: terminated empty tags <br /><hr /> INCORRECT: unterminated empty tags <br><hr> Dr Mark J Winter (Director of Studies) Department of Chemistry, The University, Sheffield S3 7HF, England tel: +44 (0)114 222 9304 fax: +44 (0)114 222 9303 e-m: mark.winter@sheffield.ac.uk http://www.shef.ac.uk/chemistry/staff/mjw/mark-winter.html WebElements is the periodic table on the world-wide web: http://www.shef.ac.uk/chemistry/web-elements/ The Sheffield Chemdex is a listing of chemistry sites on the world-wide web: http://www.shef.ac.uk/chemistry/chemdex/ chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To post to list: mailto:chemweb@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (un)subscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)