[thelist] Quoted attibute values

Aylard JA (James) jaylard at equilon.com
Mon Jan 15 13:56:37 CST 2001


> Plus, it's the spec.  XML and xHTML promise to be much more strict about
> this thing, and eventually the browsers will start following at least PART
> the spec (I'm an idealist, I know), and your old non-quoted pages will
> invariably cease to function in those browsers.

	As a matter of clarification, quoting attribute values is *not*
required in all cases by the HTML 4.01 recommendation:

"In certain cases, authors may specify the value of an attribute without any
quotation marks. The attribute value may only contain letters (a-z and A-Z),
digits (0-9), hyphens (ASCII decimal 45), periods (ASCII decimal 46),
underscores (ASCII decimal 95), and colons (ASCII decimal 58). We recommend
using quotation marks even when it is possible to eliminate them."

http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/intro/sgmltut.html#h-3.2.2

	In all cases, however, it *is* good practice -- especially in light
of XML and XHTML as Seth points out -- and should be done religiously by
responsible page designers.

James Aylard




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