There are many different elements going on behind the scenes of a website, and the common techno-speak of HTML, XHTML and CSS are probably all familiar to most users. For someone looking to find their way into coding a website the knowledge of the terms may be there, but what do the terms offer beyond the names? How do you start to make a choice of which code to use where and for why?

Whether it is in HTML or XHTML, scripting a website and combining CSS, is a challenge that can bring great rewards when the site you are building finally goes live. With the HTML, XHTML and CSS all in place everything can look great. All of the pictures will be in position, all of the headings will be displayed alike and all of the content text will flow in a perfect pattern of formatting. This will all be down to how well you have managed to script your pages with HTML, XHTML and CSS.

Standard practice for designing web pages with a coding language, predominantly HTML and then later XHTML, was to manually code every bit of information into the HTML file. Every time, for example, a heading appeared in HTML code, then it would need its own set of formatting codes. What size text, whether it is to be bold, italic or underscored all required HTML tags. Without CSS, the same HTML or XHTML code could be repeated time and time again through the entire pages of the website, just to make everything uniform. An easier format was developed to make life just that little bit easier, and it was called CSS. Now scripting with HMTL, XHTML and CSS combined makes for a more efficient process.

CSS, which stands for Cascading Style Sheets offered a much better solution to the problem of editing design in script. Scripting with HTML and XHTML could prove to be a long winded design process. Imagine developers having page upon page of scripted HTML language for a website and then have to go through to change every instance of colour for subheadings, for example. The expense of time and money doing that could be extensive. Putting to work CSS within the website, eliminates the need to trawl through pages of HTML and XHTML, as CSS sheets can do that entire process from its one file.

With CSS all of the website's recurring styles of how HTML, XHTML are displayed, can be stored in one CSS style sheet. This a immense time saver. All of the coding information within the CSS can be removed from the HTML or XHTML code itself, or simply not get implemented in the first place.

The cascading part of CSS, means that there is an order of precedence of how a web browser reads multiple CSS sheets or rules. The CSS rule or sheet which is at the top of the order will be used first when the browser reads it, so it knows how to display the design elements of the pages, whether they are in XHTML or HTML.

CSS is compatible with all browsers now, and has become something of a standardised format alongside HTML and XHTML. It is extremely useful for small networks of similar websites to be maintained quickly and easily. CSS is fully customisable and workable whether you are scripting with the more familiar HTML or its new and improved form of XHTML.

What is the difference between HTML and XHTML? They are basically two elements which have come together over time. The first element, HTML 4, is a mark-up, or scripting language which is used for web design. All the elements for text and document display are contained in this HTML 4 script. It is this language which has grown and developed into the Hypertext mark-up language (HTML) as well as elements of multimedia and document display.

XML however, was created as a mark-up language which was intended to cut out some of the more difficult and confusing aspects of HTML. What XML did for HTML coding, CSS did for style management. It made everything so much easier to work with. With these two elements combined, XHTML maintains all of the great uses of HTML, but is more workable because of its extensibility.

Extensibility is the X-factor in the XHTML. There has always been a problem with how pages have been displayed across different browser. Because of the HTML tags in the code, different browsers, of which now there are many, would display elements in a different way. The only way to get around this problem was to leave out those problematic tags from the HTML code or CSS sheet altogether, create duplicate pages which had been scripted differently for different browsers, or leave things as they were and hope nobody would notice.

Thankfully XHTML overcame the problem. By using a XHTML module, you can use any tag within your HTML code and CSS sheet and be safe in the knowledge that things will be displayed properly, whichever browser is being used to view the HTML or XHTML page.

While XHTML and CSS have made an impact on the way that web pages are being developed, the more familiar HTML is still going to be around as well. The rules are a little stricter in XHTML but the rewards are great and provides that extra functionality. Cleaner code, whether it is in XHTML, HTML or CSS, will allow pages to load that much faster and let you side step display problems.

Because browsers can be a little lazy, for want of a better word, in how their interpret HTML code, there is simply not that leeway with XHTML. XHTML validators can provide an efficient solution to any problem, by highlighting coding errors. It is always worth running any XHTML pages through one before trying to go live.

Conversion of old HTML pages into XHTML is not too difficult a process, but there are a few simple rules to follow, like nesting tags and using lower case, as XHTML is case sensitive. But with the elements all coming together, XHTML, HTML and CSS can make you web pages stand out proudly on any browser, any where.