Dagnabbit! So now I've got to learn XHTML, Doctypes AND CSS?! UURRRGH!!!

And here I thought my little PHP5 problem was a roadblock.

I couldn't imagine creating a web page without CSS now, it makes things so much easier. I wouldn't call it a coding language, you're just setting out styles. However the biggest complication is likely to be the differences by which each browser interprets styles. There are differences of a few pixels here and there which can really frustrate you. However once you've learned the basics of CSS then look into using the 960 Grid system. It's a downloadable set of CSS styles which help with your layout and fix browser issues so you don't have to think about them.
 
You don't need web design programs at all, in fact I feel like they're a hindrance more than anything. I've used Dreamweaver before but only as a fancy text editor - it has some nice project management tools. Really all you need is Notepad++ - it's a very good free editor for coding which colors your code as you write it and knows how to indent properly etc.

Once you get used to using css you will find the old way pretty inefficient and less functional. Particularly if you need to make wholesale changes to style of entire site. Noscript is not affected at all by css. If it was very few sites would work with it since every major site I know of uses them. Sites have too much dynamic data to work properly without css.

Btw, word processing programs tend to spit out awful code that takes more work to make compliant than if you had just created decent code from scratch.

dubdisciple
Once you get used to using css you will find the old way pretty inefficient and less functional. Particularly if you need to make wholesale changes to style of entire site. Noscript is not affected at all by css. If it was very few sites would work with it since every major site I know of uses them. Sites have too much dynamic data to work properly without css.

Btw, word processing programs tend to spit out awful code that takes more work to make compliant than if you had just created decent code from scratch.

Good to know. I'll probably just create my own HTML templates and reuse them as needed. I'll read up more on CSS and learn it too but so far I know basic HTML will do everything I need it to. My only concern are the articles stating that HTML5 won't "support" those tags. I mean I figured if I followed HTML 4.1 rules it would be backwards compatible pretty much forever but if that is NOT the case then I need to know so once I start creating the templates I'm not designing something that'll need a full overhaul in the future.
 
The other reason I want to use HTML 4.1 exclusively if possible is so people using older browsers can do so. If newer browsers are gonna get cranky about it... well that's gonna make me cranky. Also if I'm "validating" my pages through W3's tool and it throws compliance errors because I used a center tag or whatever instead of CSS even though it WILL work in perpetuity... well that's gonna be really annoying.

Keep in mind that html 4 was often used in a way that required lots of hacks and workarounds. In fact backwards compatibility is a much bigger problem with html 4 documents than xhtml. Older browsers will read xhtml just fine because it is very basic and clean code with no hacks. With html 4 different broswers and device s have very unpredicatble results due to the very different ways each handles the hacks necessary for formatting layout. I remember the nightmares I used to have getting sites to look the same using firefox, IE and Safari. The really awesome thing about seperating content from style is that you can make the most basic layout or the most elaborate without touching your html. Same thing goes for platforms. I used to basically design three sites and embed a browser detection script. Pain in the you know what and hellish to make changes.

I just created both a marketing website from scratch and got a forum up and running from scratch.
 
Basically, I'm just doing a lot of scratching for very little scratch. 

*stupid forum software*

The DOCTYPE stuff is not so bad since most of the the time it will be the same. CSS looks more intimidating than it is and actually makes more since after the newness wears off. I have yet to come across anyone who gave it a fair shot who quit because they could not get it. Just give it a little time :)

Beepster

sharke
Honestly, I would just forget about backwards compatibility and look to make the most up to date page you can. The thing about people with ancient browsers is, they're pretty much used to viewing modern pages that don't format correctly for them. I think you'll find that the vast majority of old browser users are either very old themselves, or they're using a computer at work that hasn't been updated in eons. I wouldn't worry about catering for the holdouts - they're a tiny percentage of your potential audience.

If HTML5 is the future then just use that. As for your design, well you don't need to be "fancy" but I would definitely think about putting some eff

One specific problem that absolutely MUST be overcome is the nature of the bulk of the specific content. It absolutely HAS to display correctly. Any line out of place throws the whole thing out of whack. We're talking text based charts and graphs. It does indeed work with standard HTML but slight variations in code or formatting destroy the whole thing. Otherwise I'll have to resort to images which would crank up the bandwidth and defeat some of the brute force user functionality I have in mind.

That's not much of a problem - the web is chock full of pages with text based charts and graphs. When you're designing a web page you have to constantly check how it looks in all browsers (I believe there are online tools which allow you to see what it would look like in old browsers) and when oddities occur, it's a matter of researching what the issue is and fixing it. Most of these oddities are well documented and have tried and tested workarounds and hacks to get around them. Every web designer uses them. But again, this is a good reason to get to grips with CSS and use a framework like the 960 grid which has predefined styles that are designed to work in ALL browsers and has the workarounds built into them.

CSS saves bandwidth by the bucketload because you have all of your site's styles encapsulated in one document, instead of being repeated on every page. When a user visits a site, the browser will load the styles once and apply them to every page on the site.

looks like sharke beat me to it

craigb
Basically, I'm just doing a lot of scratching for very little scratch. 

Thanks, Geoff (sorry for the late reply... been immersed in all this). I haven't touched CSS3 yet but now after a day or so of "studying" I have a basic understanding of CSS and how it relates to HTML (and now understand HTML/XHTML better). Still annoying that I have to learn a whole new thing (CSS) but I can definitely see how it's useful.
 
If anyone is curious after poking around at a bunch of confusing vids and websites this is the video that has made it click:
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxUv_n3T7n0
 
It is almost 5 hours long and the guy is kind of a clownwad but it is extremely thorough (as far as basics) and the little bits of comic relief certainly made it far less dry than it could have been.
 
Between that and these two references...
 
http://www.w3schools.com/tags/ref_byfunc.asp
 
http://www.w3schools.com/cssref/default.asp
 
as well as the related tuts/articles on that site I think I should be able to do 99% of what I need to at the moment.
 
One thing however that is annoying me is even though I can change my bulk layout or formatting by tweaking a CSS file it doesn't seem like I can change bulk content.
 
For example:
 
1) Let's say I want to have a banner area for ads. I don't want Javascript or to just have google tossing up whatever the frack they want. I want to just have it as a space where a sponsor can give me X amount of dollars and then I post a link/image directly into my code that leads to their site. It should subvert adblockers, not cause viruses or stupidness, I can control the content (so I'm not leading viewers to a company I don't like or putting up ads that look ugly), etc...
 
I just want to be able to paste an image link up there and have it show up on all my pages. If the sponsor changes or updates their graphics or whatever I can just strip out the old code and toss in new code and it will appear on all the appropriate pages.
 
2) If I have headers, sidebars and footers where I have navigation links that I want to have appear on every page so people can get around easily I'd like to be able to update those as the site grows. Like when I first start I'll only have five main links in those areas but as it grows and I create new areas I end up with a dozen links I'd like to again simply strip out the code for those elements (like the sidebar for example) and replace it with the new code without doing it for every page.
 
Now I'm hoping that this can be done WITHOUT using anything beyond HTML and CSS. Like maybe those banners, headers and sidebars could simply have a code that points to it's own little page (just like an external CSS page would work) and then the data from that one page loads into those areas on all pages of the site. Kind of like a webpage within a webpage I guess.
 
Is that just more advanced usage of CSS/HTML or am I stuck with either using other programs/languages (Java, PHP, whatever) or simply stuck as in I have to change nothing or everything manually a page at a time?
 
Hope that makes sense... and yeah, I shouldn't be asking you guys to teach me webdesign but it seems like we've got some experienced dudes here and it's on my mind so would like to know if that's possible and if not what exactly I should be looking at next to accomplish it.
 
So far that little dilemma is the 1% out of the 99% that HTML/CSS does not seem to cover at the moment and it's making my OCD go all wiggy. lol
 
Cheers and thanks for all the insights so far even if this doesn't garner any more attention. I'm sure I'll figure it all out eventually.

Beepster. It sounds like what you would like falls outside the bounds of xhtml and css. Maybe someone knows a workaround using just those two, but ifbit were me and I wanted to have dynamically changing banners and such, I would go with some scripting and database based solution. This just takes the idea of seperating content data from layout another step. With today's large constantly changing websites, having to constantly alter HTML manually would be next to impossible. Building the sight based on a procedural semantic system would allow you to create sections like footers and headers and still use something like php to alter the content as needed.

Thanks, guys. I'm not opposed to learning other stuff (even Javascript which I hate) and will do it. I guess at the moment I figure as I try stuff out in HTML and CSS I'll be doing mock ups of what I actually want to go live. I would hate to create something that is really cool that I want to use, get excited and actually use it for a bunch of pages THEN find out that I need those other languages. If it's totally impossible then I'd hold of for a bit and learn those other things first before even starting to play around.
 
However if notepad++ can actually scour and bulk replace material in multiple docs like that somehow then that is REALLY cool and pretty much solves the problem. I'll have to test it out of course. I never would have known if you hadn't mentioned it.
 
Thanks again, guys.