"To Quote or Not To Quote"

I have noticed a lot of confusion over the use, or non-use of quotation marks in HTML coding. The WebTV browser is very forgiving and will display all commands without quotation marks, but this a bad habit to get into. This information might help clear up some of the questions on the subject.

I have done a little research on this, and according to strict HTML standards, whenever you use an attribute it's value should appear within quotation marks. But today's browsers usually don't need them to understand the attribute commands.

So instead of:

<font color="red" size="4">

Simply use:

<font color=red size=4>

It works just as well on all browsers and saves a few key strokes, as well as a few unnecessary bytes on your page. However, there are times when you should use quotation marks. You should use them with:

• Values that begin with a plus sign or minus sign.
  • <font size="+2">

• When using multiple words such as you use in an alt tag.
  • ...alt="image name here"

• When using hexadecimal values for colors.
  • color="#000000"

• When using URLs with slashes in anchor or image tags. This includes when using relative linking.
  • <a href="http://wtv-zone.com/driver/">
  • <img src="images/picture.jpg">

<img src="http://www.URL/images/picture.jpg" width=100 height=100 alt="Name of Image">

Always remember that if you miss one of the quotation marks, it will be enough to invalidate the entire code. If you have problems with a tag, always count quotation marks first because it's easy to miss one.