April 21, 2005
Please feel free to invite some of your colleagues from your or another city/county if you think it would benefit them to be a part of our group.
Attendance
City of Gladstone, MO – Kelly Behr
City of Grain Valley, MO - John Paa
City of Kansas City, MO - Rich Lovett and Jan Wilkinson
City of Overland Park, KS - Chris Audano and Randy Ellis
City of Shawnee, KS - Sonya Fendorf and Roman Madrigal
Jackson County, MO - Dan Davis and Joe Janner
Johnson County, KS - Anthony Oropeza, Sonia Smith, and Karen Sorensen
Mid-America Regional Council - Barbara Hensley
Presentation: XHTML
Dan Davis, systems analyst from Jackson County, gave a presentation on the basics of XHTML. Developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C, http://www.w3.org/), XHTML (Extensible HTML) is the next evolution of HTML 4.0. It uses stricter conventions that are designed to help make documents display better on many types of devices: laptops, PDAs, cell phones, Braille readers, etc.
Dan began by reviewing some key differences between XHTML and HTML:
Unlike HTML tags, XHTML tags must be written in lowercase. All XHTML tags must have an end tag. Elements with only one tag need a closing slash (/) at the end of the tag.
All attributes must be quoted in XHTML.
XHTML requires that tags be nested correctly. For example, if you open a bold tag and then an italics tag, you must close the italics tag before you close the bold tag.
Dan created a study guide to help MAGWeb members learn XHTML. The study guide and sample files will be available on www.kcmagweb.org.
Dan also recommended several books for those wanting to learn more about XHTML:
Beginning Web Programming with HTML, XHTML, and CSS / ISBN: 0764570781 (Wrox Beginning Guides) by Jon Duckett.
JavaScript Unleashed / ISBN: 0672324318 by R. Allen Wyke and Jason Gilliam.
Sams Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days / ISBN: 0672325764 by Steve Holzner.
Beginning XSLT / ISBN: 1861005946 by Jeni Tennison.
Other Business
Kelliy Behr won this month’s drawing for a copy of Virtual PC from Microsoft.
The 2005 Government Webmasters Conference is scheduled for Sept. 22 and 23 in Denver. Registration is $175. It’s advised to register early because there may not be enough hotel rooms. Visit www.governmentwebmasters.org for more information.
Upcoming Meeting Topic Suggestions
Possibly Content Management Systems.
Next Meeting
Thursday, May 19, 2005, 10 a.m. at MARC.
Meeting minutes: Karen Lynne Sorensen, Johnson County Wastewater