Re: HTML VALIDATOR?

----- Original Message -----
From: Dick <r.schweiss(at)worldnet.att.net>

> I just ran one of my sites thru one of those "valdation" utioities, and
have
> several questions on some of the "faults" found
>
> 1st ...  What is the difference between <B> and <strong>  .. refering to
> BOLD text?
>  ("<B> is physical font markup ... use logical  (such as strong"))

<b> is purely a visual format, while <strong> indicates actual emphasis -
someone using a text-to-speech browser will, if the browser produces that
degree of expression, hear the word or phrase spoken with emphasis.  The
usual method of interpreting <strong> in visual browsers is to make the
word or phrase bold, and as a result, the two tend to be used
interchangeably, which isn't strictly correct.  I use both - sometimes I
just want to highlight a word visually, without indicating that it should
be emphasised, so I use <b>, while sometimes I do want to emphasis the word
or phrase, so I use <strong>.

And we shouldn't assume that "text-to-speech" technology is the sole
preserve of the blind and visually impaired.  We're starting to see mobile
phones that can browse the web, and that leads to in-car browsers, and who
knows - maybe you'll be able to browse via your pocket radio in a few years
time - and they are all going to use similar technology in terms of
rendering web pages as speech.

> 2nd ... What (or why)is the "necessity" for this ... "img does not have
ALT
> text defined ... setting WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes on IMG tag can
improve
> rendering performance" ??  .. This was noted on most of my imported
graphics
> .... such as divider bars ...

Just a note in addition to what others have already said about this - you
might be wondering what sort of ALT text is needed for something like a
bullet or a divider bar.  You can either leave it as ALT="", or, if you
feel that it's important to indicate the presence of the graphic even if
someone has graphics turned off or is using a text only browser, you could
represent a bullet graphic with, for example, " * " or " - " as its ALT
text, and something like "---" as the ALT text for a divider bar.

Regards,
Donna
--
dms(at)zetnet.co.uk
Different Worlds:  http://www.users.zetnet.co.uk/dms/
Pictures of the Past, The Leslie Smith Family,
An Introduction to HTML, Copyright Considerations
Online Bookshop

HTML: hwg-basics mailing list archives, maintained by Webmasters @ IWA