An XHTML Tutorial That Does Not Assume HTML?

stevelinton writes "I am looking for a tutorial similar to Dave Ragget's excellent HTML tutorial(s), but for XHTML 1.1. I am NOT looking for a "HTML to XHTML" conversion tutorial. I want to teach a class XHTML 1.1 from day 1, without assuming that they know any HTML at all. Does anyone know of such a thing?"

Comments

You can't learn XHTML without HTML

[_vapor]

I looked around for something like what you are looking for, and I found this. As I see it, the problem with your request is that XHTML is not a "language" in itself. XHTML is essentially an XML-ized form of HTML. When you are writing XHTML, you are still using HTML tags (aside from the XHTML DTDs and such); the difference is that you are following XHTML rules (i.e. all tags must be lowercase, they must be well-formed, you must close all tags, etc). That is why, I think, it is hard to find an XHTML tutorial that doesn't presuppose that you already know the essentials of HTML. My advice to you is that if you are going to teach XHTML from step 1, presupposing no HTML knowledge, the best way would be to teach HTML but require the students to follow XHTML's rules.

Re:You can't learn XHTML without HTML

[lewp]

Perhaps IHBT, but oh well.

Lazy HTML users? Most of the HTML hacks that "lazy" designers use are to get around browser incompatibilities so their clients' complex layouts look correct in all the browsers their customers might be using.

You think people who design for a living wouldn't love to be able to just use CSS for everything and avoid nested tables and spacer gifs? Being able to run their page through the w3's validator and being positive it will work? Most of them are on cloud 9 that they can avoid font tags for the most part nowadays.

Creating a simple page with CSS handling all the layout questions and having it just work everywhere is a dream that most designers want to realize. The current practice of creating a site and testing it in NN 4/6/7, IE 5(Win/Mac)/5.5/6, and perhaps Opera and Konq depending on the client's requirements, then adjusting for one browser's quirks and testing everything again is certainly not something designers enjoy. Unfortunately, the people who sign the checks don't so much care about clean HTML code as they do their pretty layout working in every browser they might use no matter how decrepit it is.

Good stuff here . . .

[robbear7]

http://www.w3schools.com/xhtml/default.asp

XHTML vs XML

[ptaff]

First of all, something _very_ important is to make sure your students understand the 'tree-like' organisation of information in XML. h1 and p tags are NOT designed to be tags for bigger size and line breaks. People tend to look HTML as a paint program, it's so easy and Internet Explorer allows all this stuff.

Then you can show them HTML tags. I think the road from HTML to XHTML is much more dangerous than beginning with XML because of all the bells and whistles that can distract from the fact that XHTML is a _structure oriented_ markup language.

As some of your students will already know some HTML, don't let them corrupt their classmates with "witty" tricks like spacers made out of GIFs and FONT all over the place.

May I suggest Mozilla as a workbench? it can be configured to be extremely strict regarding XML syntax, and if it does fine in Mozilla, you are SURE it's legal.

Intro to XHTML

[Miraz]

No problem at all to start people off on XHTML instead of HTML. For an entry level, beginner's course which teaches correct, valid, accessible XHTML which will then link to a CSS stylesheet look at my Intro to XHTML. This includes how to correctly structure information rather than just format it. Includes MP3 files and video. It's free.