In the last part of loan2.html the code reads...

"How much do you want to pay a month?
<INPUT NAME=Month TYPE=text SIZE=5>"

Why are there no quote marks around Month? It seems to work either way (with or without the quote - I tried), but in earlier examples of naming user data input, quote marks are put around the name. Does it matter whether or not I use quotes?
Seems like it should. Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

It doesn't matter if you are using a loose HTML interpreter 'Docutype' setting. Like 'Transitional'. If you want to be strictly HTML 4.01 compliant or XHTML compliant then the statement should be written like this:

<input type="text" name="month" value="" size="5" />

Each value should be enclosed within quotes, you should stick to all lowercase letters (future versions of HTML are going to be case-sensitive). And use a slash to close the tag for tags which have no opening AND closing tag already (for XHTML compliance). The XHTML standard states that all tags must have both an opening and closing tag and uses the slash method as a shortcut for tags which do not already have a closing tag like (br, img, input, meta, etc.).

Even if you consider yourself to be pretty HTML savvy, it wouldn't hurt to pick up a copy of wrox's HTML 4.01 book, which has loads of information about the docutype setting and pretty much tells all there is to know about HTML and where its going. I was very pleased with the book. It helped me to understand a lot of the nuisances between browsers.

My advice is don't be lazy! Get used to the standards now! This will guarantee that your code won't break on future browser releases.

: )
Rich



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Smiling Souls
http://www.smilingsouls.net
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Oh and single name attributes should be written as name, value pairs,

Like so:

<select size="4" name="my_select" multiple="multiple">
<option value="my_value">My option text</option>
</select>

The old way of writing this was:

<select size=4 name=my_select multiple>
 <option value=my_value>My option text
</select>

This is very sloppy and should be avoided! It takes just a few extra keystrokes to do this to standards compliance. The second example should by all rights break under a strict docutype setting.

: )
Rich



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Smiling Souls
http://www.smilingsouls.net
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Thanks for the prompt response Rich!

Best,
Karen