Posted by Jukka K. Korpela on 12/23/07 21:21

Scripsit Steve:

> Ok i am now getting very confused.

We can see that from the Subject line.

> Initally I was under the opinion
> that then the BR tag was ment to be <br /> to make it W3C compliant.

You were confused by reading about XHTML. Just stop that.

> But when I use there validator it says it should be <br>.

The confused and confusing material you read about apparently didn't
tell you about doctypes.

> So it it correct then that <br /> is actually XML and not HTML?

No, it's both XML and HTML, but in pre-XHTML HTML, its meaning is
completely different and it's not correctly processed by any browser
worth mentioning, so you should not use it there. Confused? Blaim
Cana... I mean XHTML. And you should stop reading about XHTML until you
know that you have a real reason to know about it.

> If this is the case then I found hundreds of site out there saying
> they are W3C comliant (HTML 4.01) when they actually are not.

The W3C has partial responsibility, since it advocates the use of "Valid
(X)HTML!" icons, which are worse than useless and often blatant lies.
But if someone lies about markup being valid, he's the one to put the
main blaim on.

> So basically W3C is a load of rubbish as not may are sticking to it?

No, XHTML as usually advertized is worse than rubbish, since it confuses
you.

> ---
> avast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.

You seem to have a fake signature virus, possibly masquerading as
antivirus software.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

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