Mani Sheriar has written an interesting post on the Vitamin website about her experiences with XHTML and CSS web design.

Though Mani touches upon the basic benefits of streamlined CSS/XHTML design, like improved accessibility, page loading and search engine friendliness, she focuses mostly on the long-term benefits of the Standards-based approach.

How easy is it to approach a redesign in the future?

Well, Mani suggests approaching the XHTML structure first, regardless of what the final design will look like - Let’s code our XHTML as if we plan to have 10 different designers apply their own unique layouts to it. If we can do it that way, then we will be able to execute minor or even major design overhauls without touching a single page in the site.

The logic of this idea is carefully explained through experience of several site designs and subsequent realigns, which were achieved with virtually the same XHTML structure.

I must say, this idea appeals as a designer. The closest I have come to this in the real world is through adapting the Sandbox theme for WordPress.

Sandbox is an incredibly complex and powerful WordPress theme that makes the best possible use of semantic XHTML, even implementing Microformats where they can be identified.

The idea behind Sandbox is that it can be skinned completely through CSS, and is flexible enough that you can move containers around in the CSS rather than constantly change your XHTML.

Essentially the whole idea harks back to the ethos behind the CSSZenGarden site: one well-formed XHTML document can be styled in unlimited ways with the right creative input. Very good article and a reminder that we should be striving to improve the art of web standards, not merely resting on our laurels!

The ever tech-savvy Paul Stamatiou has written a two-part tutorial (with more to come) on how to write a basic web application using a LAMP setup.

Personally, I got into web development via ASP, and its successor ASP.NET. As a result, most of my development work to date has been on Microsoft platforms. But since getting into WordPress, Drupal and other LAMP-based content managenent systems, I’ve wanted to know a little bit more about how PHP code ticks.

Paul’s tutorials are about as quick an intro to PHP development as you’ll need. So far, he’s covered essentials such as connecting to the database, using include files, passing values from web forms and interacting with the database to create (and delete) user accounts.

Because all of my sites are now hosted on LAMP servers, any development work I want to do for the moment will have to be done in PHP/MySQL, so learning how to code in this framework will be essential if I want to realise a couple of ideas I have. Paul’s tutorial couldn’t have come at a better time.

Anyway, LAMP hosting is a hell of a lot cheaper than IIS any day!

Because I develop sites using both ASP.NET and PHP, I’m tied to a Windows setup for the foreseeable future. However, I’ve been doing more and more work recently with LAMP-type applications which normally require a working Linux server installation.

Although I currently dual-boot with Kubuntu (because KDE’s pretty), I don’t have the Linux know-how to set up and run Apache/MySQL/PHP. XAMPP is a fantastic alternative, because it runs a fully configured LAMP setup on a Windows machine.

I installed it today for the first time, and one warning is to switch off or disable your IIS installation, because Apache will conflict with IIS for use of Port 80, and FileZilla will also clash with IIS for access to FTP on Port 21.

Anyway, I was able to install WordPress into a local folder in a matter of minutes and set up a new database in MySQL just as quickly using the bundled phpMyAdmin.

Also, I was able to enable mod_rewrite for my WordPress blog by modifying httpd.conf (in XAMPP/apache/conf/) - look for the line that identifies the rewrite module and remove the # from the start of the line. Restart your apache server and you’re all set.

This looks like it could be a lot of fun! The biggest advantage is being able to test and develop sites on my own test server, rather than constantly FTPing to a remote site.