HTML/DHTML/XHTML/ others?

Choice of web page authoring language

[ARWhiston]

I'm a doityourselfer and 5 years ago taught myself how to use notepad and HTML to put up a couple of sites using tables. Now, CSS is here and I'm told TABLES are bad/slow - so I'm redoing my sites. I am befuddled as to what html language to redo my sites with in order to use CSS and attempt to make them look and act the same in IE and Firefox. My early attempts trying to use CSS and the float property along with XHTML have been horrendous! Bottom line.... what should I be using now and why to build web sites with Notepad?

[Dabrowski]

I am also a DIY coder. I prefer an editor called PSPad, it's still text based but designed for code.

That aside, I am using HTML4/STRICT with CSS. The transition from tables is difficult, and most of the messages posted in the CSS forum are relating to height as you will find!

There are pros/cons of XHTML, but it's not entirely supported yet, and I'm told HTML5 will replace it anyways, so I'm sticking with HTML for the moment.

That said, if you have a specific question, ask away!

[tedster]

Note that "dhtml" is not a mark-up language, but just a short hand way of talking about html+css+javascript.

I mostly use strict html 4 with css for styling. But most of the time I still use a basic table "layout grid" to hold the page in place. Not nested tables, mind you, just the outer grid.

If you've got a nice "purist" template that uses only css divs and is quite cross-browser friendly, then sure, use that and pitch all your layout tables to the dust bin. And if you're working up new templates for a major web development, and you've got the time and resources to get it to work cross browser without using layout tables, then that's all good, too.

But if you're doing something modest but still somewhat customized, then I find that working with all divs and no layout tables at all takes a whole lot of cross-browser tweaking time that I don't have to give such a project.