Yes, not a bad idea Adrienne! "Simple" too would draw in the
crowds.
Using "Strict" has a long tradition. Even HTML 2.0 had a "Strict"
version, characterized as "the more structurally rigid definition of
HTML". It was described very loosely (pun intended) in the HTML 2.0
specification prose, so to check out what it really meant, you had to
look at the SGML code (and few people knew how to read it). In fact,
even I haven't checked it out, in spite of working with HTML since the
early 1990s and having read and written a few books on it.
Out of curiosity, I did so now. Here's what HTML 2.0 Strict meant, in
comparison to HTML 2.0 in the usual sense:
1) A link (<a ...>...</a>) may contain only text-level markup. "Normal"
HTML 2.0 allowed headings too.
2) The <body> element must not directly contain text-level markup,
except <img> elements. Other text must be wrapped in a block container.
So this is similar to the Strict version of HTML 4.01, except for the
<img> issue.
3) The <nextid> element is not allowed (it was an obscure tag that had
become pointless).
Not much, is it? At that time, there was no issue with presentational
markup, because HTML 2.0 mostly had no such thing (though people had
started using some structural elements presentationally, e.g.
<blockquote> for indentation).
The Strict version of HTML 4.01 is basically a combination of two ideas:
the idea that all text should appear in block-level containers (as in
HTML 2.0 Strict but in a stronger sense), and the idea that
presentational markup is bad. Neither idea was applied strictly (pun
intended). Neither idea is particularly brilliant, though it might be
appropriate to say that presentational markup be avoided unless it is
clearly the best way to achieve a goal, given the current status of
support to alternative methods (i.e., CSS).
I repeat my advice to the OP but modify the means by which he
should change it: get someone - plead or bribe the previous
webmaster to do this one thing: remove all lines in the css that
go "font-size: ..." and especially "font-height: ...". Making it
strict, making it valid, no one at all will notice. Removing the
font rules, everyone will notice an improvement in readability
and looks.
I'm afraid the site
http://unico-tc.com is so poorly designed that
"fixing" it is a vast job, much bigger than redesigning it along simple
no-nonsense principles. Using Comic Sans, in red color, in copy text on
the main page says it all, or more than I'd care to know.
There is strong evidence for the site having been written and maintained
using DreamWeaver. Whether this connection can be broken depends on what
features are used on the pages. Without a careful study, I would not
recommend trying to maintain it with any other software.
So the OP needs DreamWeaver and a crash course in using it. (It will
cost "a bit" more than $80.) Failing that, it is appropriate to give up
- according to the description, the promise was made under certain
assumptions, so it's best treated as a conditional promise.
It is generally unproductive to "fix" broken design or convert existing
pages from, say, tagsoup pretending to be XHTML 4.01 Transitional into
HTML 4.01 Strict (which is being phased out in favor of HTML5). There is
hardly anything to be won by "cleaning up" the code but a lot one can
lose, like the functionality of the site. Remember that fixing things
always breaks things - even the best people make mistakes, and computers
make their contribution too. (You might fix something if something is
really broken, in a manner that matters, and you know how to fix it, and
you will test things well. But general clean-up is something quite
different.)
