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Valid HTML 4.0! 		  spacer
HTML 4.0, now consisting of 92 elements, became the "official" standard in April of '98.

This is the HTML 4.0 Transitional DTD, which includes presentation attributes and elements that W3C expects to phase out as support for style sheets matures. Authors should use the Strict DTD when possible, but may use the Transitional DTD when support for presentation attribute and elements is required.

HTML 4.0 includes mechanisms for style sheets, scripting, embedding objects, improved support for right to left and mixed direction text, and enhancements to forms for improved accessibility for people with disabilities.


HTML 4.0 was a move back to the separation of structure and presentation. Some of the tags that had been introduced in HTML 3.2 were already being deprecated. Indeed, several attributes were first introduced in HTML 4.0, as already deprecated.

Some of these include the FACE attribute for the FONT element, the ALIGN attribute for nearly all elements and the BGCOLOR, and BACKGROUND attributes.

This kind of text-block highlighting is visible on all browsers which support the bgcolor attribute of tables, but the use of Style Sheets forces people who use older browsers to either upgrade, or forego the presentation effects. (which then renders the page much as HTML 2.0 did)


Valid HTML 4.0! dumb_ad
Modems had been upgraded to 33.6 and 56 kbps (even some cable-modem and DSL in limited markets) and the number of websites was exploding. Advertisers found an almost unlimited supply of places to advertise, so, as dictated by the law of supply and demand, advertising rates plummetted.

A website could expect to reap $20 per thousand impressions in 1997, but by 1999 that had dropped 90% to a mere $2 per thousand. Many of the dot-com companies that had included advertising revenues in their business plans could no longer support operations in this new market. One would think such a development would mean more sites forgoing irritating ads. Unfortunately the dream of millions of ad hits generating thousands of dollars keeps webmasters chasing the rainbow.