Benefits - if you are xhtml compliant, then you can be assured that the page will load in all browsers, you also then meet about 90+% of the W3C Web Accessibility requirements.

Basics - Here is a list of basic xhtml requirements with some examples.

• all tags must be lower case
• all tags must have an end tag (<br /> OR <br></br>)
• all tags with attributes must have the equal sign (=) and the attribute must be in quotes (") (<input type="radio" name="Radio1" value="1" checked="checked">)
• you can validate online from the W3C site at:http://validator.w3.org

Tag Deaths - <font> and <center> Here is the list of the replacements:

• <font> - Use the <span> with CSS styles, or develop a class and attach it to another tag.
• <center> - Use a table aligned center (Note: you can not span and use an align center CSS attribute... it doesn't work that way.)

<table> - isIE6 actually follows the W3C DOM correctly. Tables inherit the properties of the parent table. If you center a parent table, the child table is centered, but you can over-ride that by declaring the alignment (or other attributes) in the child table.

JavaScript in Tables - Must be within the <td> tags. If you want the JavaScript to build a table row or cell, you must have JavaScript build the entire table in order for it to validate xhtml compliance.

<img>, <table>, and isNS6 - By default, Netscape 6 treats images that are in table cells as css text boxes. This has the effect of forcing a 14 pixel padding above, and a 4 pixel padding below the image, which tends to break many page designs. To overcome this, add img { display:block; } to your css file, or in the <img> tag, put style="display:block;"