XHTML Interview Question and Answer

There are many things that you can do ahead of time to prepare for the interviewing process, and move yourself a step above of the competition. Updating your resume and reviewing frequently asked interview questions can be very effective, and goes a long way in getting the most out of your interview.

XHTML should be the master storage format for my resources?

NO! XHTML still lacks semantics. Ideally your resources should be stored in an appropriate XML format. XSLT can then be used to convert the resources to XHTML (for Web browsers), WML (for mobile phones), etc. XHTML is a useful intermediate stage.

 

Can we get down to practicalities. How do I create XHTML pages?

The eGroups XHTML-L Web site provides links to XHTML tools, including conversion tools and editors. A couple of free tools are available (HTML-Kit, 1st Page 2000). Mozquito Factory appears to be the first licensed package on the market.
You can expect the usual suspects (Microsoft, Dreamweaver, etc) to bring out new versions of their products with XHTML support.

 

What about conversion of existing HTML pages - especially bulk conversion, as I have many thousands of HTML files!

W3C has written a utility program called Tidy which can be used to convert HTML pages to XHTML. Tidy can be used in batch mode to bulk-convert documents. Tidy is an open source program, which has been incorporated into an number of authoring tools, most notably HTML-Kit

 

What's the advantages of XHTML?

* Mixed namespaces
* Much simpler to work with (for programs, at least) than HTML
* You will immediately know when your document is not well-formed due to an error from your UA.

 

What's XHTML DTD?

The XHTML standard defines three Document Type Definitions.

The most common is the XHTML Transitional.

The <!DOCTYPE> Is Mandatory
An XHTML document consists of three main parts:
* the DOCTYPE
* the Head
* the Body

The basic document structure is:
<!DOCTYPE ...>
<html>
<head>
<title>... </title>
</head>
<body> ... </body>
</html>

The DOCTYPE declaration should always be the first line in an XHTML document.

An XHTML Example
This is a simple (minimal) XHTML document:
<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>simple document</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>a simple paragraph</p>
</body>
</html>

The DOCTYPE declaration defines the document type:
<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

The rest of the document looks like HTML:
<html>
<head>
<title>simple document</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>a simple paragraph</p>
</body>
</html>

The 3 Document Type Definitions
* DTD specifies the syntax of a web page in SGML.
* DTD is used by SGML applications, such as HTML, to specify rules that apply to the markup of documents of a particular type, including a set of element and entity declarations.
* XHTML is specified in an SGML document type definition or 'DTD'.
* An XHTML DTD describes in precise, computer-readable language, the allowed syntax and grammar of XHTML markup.

There are currently 3 XHTML document types:
* STRICT
* TRANSITIONAL
* FRAMESET

XHTML 1.0 specifies three XML document types that correspond to three DTDs: Strict, Transitional, and Frameset.
XHTML 1.0 Strict

<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

Use this when you want really clean markup, free of presentational clutter. Use this together with Cascading Style Sheets.
XHTML 1.0 Transitional
<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

Use this when you need to take advantage of HTML's presentational features and when you want to support browsers that don't understand Cascading Style Sheets.
XHTML 1.0 Frameset
<!DOCTYPE html
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">
Use this when you want to use HTML Frames to partition the browser window into two or more frames