In our Coding Standards, we say that with semantic XHTML and CSS we separate our content from our presentation. eXtensible HyperText Markup Language and Cascading Style Sheets are flexible, accessible, and logical ways to mark up content for the web.
XHTML has a creed:
CSS and XHTML separates style from content: the way things look from what things mean. CSS takes care of how everything looks; XHTML controls what things mean. In this way, you can build consistent, logical documents that can be read on any device, by any user agent, whether that be a screen reader, a palm pilot, a printer, or whatever the next gadget might be.
It's faster and easier to code correctly, because there is a process of reasoning that you can follow. Instead of thinking, oh, this is a heading, so I want it to be on its own line, so I'll put a <br> break in and I want it bold and in a bigger font and centred, you can just think, oh, this is
A list of all current HTML tags
So, throw out your font tags! Release your <b>bolding</b>! Deny your layout tables and reject your
Computers don't understand that <i>this</i> word is emphasised but <i>The Lord of the Rings</i> is a book, unless you tell them that <em>this</em>; word is emphasised and <cite>The Lord of the Rings</cite> is a ship.
<blockquote>isn't a quick way to indent. It marks up a block of quoted text as opposed to an <q>line of quoted text</q>. </blockquote>
Once your content is marked up in a consistent, semantic, and logical manner, you can go wild with your presentational CSS. You can change the way your entire site looks by changing a single line in a single document. If you decide you want to put a border round every image, for example, you can just write:
img { border: 1px solid black; }
Here are two PDFs: [html] [css] Print them out. They contain, on two A4 pages, what you need to know about HTML and CSS.