Date:    Mon, 21 Mar 2005 14:15:09 -0800
From:    Peter Shkabara <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: HTML question

I am a bit confused as to when quotation marks are required in HTML code.
For example:
<link href="mystyle.css" rel=stylesheet type=text/css>
<link href="mystyle.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">

or
<td height=25>
<td height="25">

I know that either form seems to work with or without quotations. Looking
over the standards, I can't seem to find where is says that you have to use
the quotations marks. I also found that the apostrophe (') works just as
well as the ("). Can anyone share more information on this?

Thank you.

Peter

Depending on what language the web page was created in, the older HTML text
in quotes is usually a named characteristic associated with a specific tag.
Where you have <attribute="value">, it may contain a particular element such
as a URL, a user supplied name (input field), a numeric value, user supplied
text, a server-dependant name or a set of fixed values ( like color). XML
cleans up a lot of user defined input and may replace the need for quotation
marks. I taught myself HTML 4.0 (which is now considered old) and I know
that a lot of coding attributes were for the benefit of pages that were
older and created using previous formats. As these pages expire and are
either recreated using newer code, or eliminated altogether, the need for
backwards compatibility decreases. It's quite possible that the need for
quotation marks has been either superceded with another switch or
eliminated. Or the newer code is optimized for more browsers. I guess I need
to brush up on some of the newer code ;-).


Chris Ryan
[log in to unmask]

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