1 Here are some guidelines for updating samba.org:
5 The new design for samba.org uses xhtml 1.0 Transitional.
6 xhtml is different from html<=4.0 in several ways. The
7 difference is minimal in terms of syntax, but major in
8 terms of its implications on the page. A rundown of each:
12 xhtml is case sensitive, and all tags are lowercase.
13 <ul> != <UL> Therefore, mixing case is bad, too.
14 You can't do <a HREF="...">.
18 xhtml requires all tags be closed. Most notably, this
19 affects the former <br>, <hr>, and <img> tags; these should
20 now be written as <br />, <hr />, and
21 <img src="..." alt="..." />. The img tag is the one that
22 catches people most often, especially in the following syntax:
23 <a href="..."><img src="..." alt="..." /></a>. Even though
24 the anchor tags are closed, the image tag must still be closed.
28 Tags must close in the proper nesting order. An example:
29 <tag1><tag2></tag2></tag1>. This is a simple example, but
30 in nesting lists it can get confusing. Also, within forms
31 using other tags can get sticky. I'm still learning some
32 of the nuances of this myself, so be careful with this
33 one. Use an online validator to check if you're not sure.
35 ***Why You Should Care***
37 html is *very* forgiving. xhtml is not. If you miss one of
38 the above in your web page, there's no telling what it will
39 look like in different browsers. In fact, most of the wild
40 page display problems during the move to the new design were
41 due to xhtml validation problems. And there's no telling how
42 a browser may handle an error. We still have several html
43 hold-overs, but none of them are critical, at least in terms of
49 If you have to add a completely new page to a directory,
50 templates have been provided in each directory. Adding
51 a page should simply be a matter of opening the template
52 and adding in the info you want. Make sure you follow
53 the xhtml rules above and be sure to add a title between
54 the title tags. The two-header system was built to allow
55 for page specific titles. This is a help in browser bookmarks
56 and search engine indexing.
61 Page formatting is handled by css. This is another important
62 consideration in xhtml sites versus html sites. This means that
63 you should not use a bunch of attribute tags to style a page.
64 For example, <table border="3" width="30" height="100"> is
65 not used in xhtml/css sites. The stylesheet rules control
66 the look of each element. If you use just normal <h3> tags for
67 headings and <p> tags for paragraphs, styles are already in place.
69 Also, see </samba/styles/common.css> for a number of built in
70 styles. Simply declare a style as an attribute of a tag to use
71 a particular style. So if you want to use the headline style,
72 write <p class="headline">YOUR_INFO_HERE</p>. Stylesheets
73 distinguish classes with a "." and ids with a "#". Using the logo
74 style would require <p id="logo">CONTENT_HERE</p>.
79 If you need styles added or have special formatting requirements,
80 please email me (deryck[at]samba[dot]org). Questions and comments