Such tags and attributes are referred to as
deprecated, meaning they are marked for removal from the standard and may not be supported
in future browsers. In cases when deprecated tags are used in this book, this will be
highlighted (and likewise in the reference section); in most cases, these tags can be
avoided.
Semantic markup
In the previous few subsections, you may have noticed specific elements being used for
specific things. This is referred to as semantic markup and is a very important aspect of
modern web design. Plenty of (X)HTML elements exist, and each one has a clearly defined
purpose (although some have more than one use). Because of the flexibility of markup
languages, it??™s often possible to ???wrongly??? use elements, bashing your page into shape by
using elements for design tasks they??™re not strictly suited for and certainly weren??™t originally
designed for.
During the course of this book, we??™ll talk about semantics a fair amount. Ultimately, good
semantic design enables you to simplify your markup and also provides the greatest scope
for being able to style it with CSS (see the following section). By thinking a little before you
code and defining your content with the correct markup, you??™ll end up with cleaner code
and make it much easier for yourself in the long run when it comes to adding presentation
to your content.
AN INTRODUCTION TO WEB DESIGN
9
1
Introducing CSS
CSS is the W3C standard for defining the visual presentation for web pages.
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