HTML The Definitive Guide Read Online Free PDF

most Frenchmen despite the best efforts of the Académie Française.
    Fortunately, with HTML version 4.0, the W3C standards have caught up with the browser manufacturers. In fact, the tables have turned somewhat. The many extensions to HTML that originally appeared as extensions in Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer are now part of the HTML 4.0 standard, and there are other parts of the new standard that are not yet features of the popular browsers.

    1.5.2 Avoiding Extensions
    In general, we urge you to resist using an HTML extension unless you have a compelling and overriding reason to do so. By using them, particularly in key portions of your documents, you run the risk of losing a substantial portion of your potential readership. Sure, the Netscape community is large enough to make this point moot now, but even so, you are excluding several million people without Netscape from your pages.
    Of course, there are varying degrees of dependency on HTML extensions. If you use some of the horizontal rule extensions, for example, most other browsers will ignore the extended attributes and render a conventional horizontal rule. On the other hand, reliance upon a number of font size changes and text alignment extensions to control your document appearance will make your document look terrible on many alternative browsers. It might not even display at all on browsers that don't support the extensions.
    We admit that it is a bit disingenuous of us to decry the use of HTML extensions while presenting complete descriptions of their use. In keeping with the general philosophy of the Internet, we'll err on the side of handing out rope and guns to all interested parties while hoping you have enough smarts to keep from hanging yourself or shooting yourself in the foot.
    Our advice still holds, though: only use an extension where it is necessary or very advantageous, and do so with the understanding that you are disenfranchising a portion of your audience. To that end, you might even consider providing separate, standards-based versions of your documents to accommodate users of other browsers.
    1.5.3 Beyond Extensions: Exploiting Bugs It is one thing to take advantage of an extension to HTML, and quite another to exploit known bugs in a particular version of a browser to achieve some unusual document effect.
    A good example is the multiple-body bug in Version 1.1 of Netscape Navigator. The HTML standard insists that an HTML document have exactly one tag, containing the body of the document.
    The now-obsolete browser allowed any number of tags, processing and rendering each in turn. By placing several tags in an HTML document, an author could achieve crude animation effects when the document was first loaded into the browser. The most popular trick used several tags, each with a slightly different background color. This trick results in a document fade-in effect.
    The party ended when Version 1.2 of Netscape fixed the bug. Suddenly, thousands of documents lost their fancy fade-in effect. Although faced with some rather fierce complaints, to their credit, the people at Netscape stood by their decision to adhere to the standard, placing compliance higher on their list of priorities than nifty rendering hacks.
    In that light, we can unequivocally offer this advice: never exploit a bug in a browser to achieve a particular effect in your documents.
    1.4 HTML: What It Isn't
    1.6 Tools for the HTML
    Designer

    Chapter 1
    HTML and the World Wide
    Web
     
    1.6 Tools for the HTML Designer
    While you can use the barest of barebones text editors to create HTML documents, most HTML
    authors have a bit more elaborate toolbox of software utilities than a simple word processor. You also need, at least, a browser, so you can test and refine your work. Beyond the essentials are some specialized software tools for HTML document preparation and editing, and others for developing and preparing accessory multimedia