About Me

My name is Jeff - a.k.a. - topdown. Most people that know me on the internet know me as 'topdown'. I started out writing HTML for myself a few years back and realized how much I enjoyed coding. I have always been into art, so the graphics part is natural. I originally taught myself HTML the old school way using tables for layout, that was the basic way to code web pages back then. I helped on a support forum with helping their members on their coding projects and ended up with quite a following.
Webmasters United was Born
I have developed numerous phpBB3 styles, a lot of web sites and currently have my support forum here for coding, customer support, web development related materials, and STG Star Trek Guide Forums(phpBB3 MODs and Styles Development) where I am on staff as a Styles Team member and the Styles Author Leader.

Coding
I started with HTML and I admit it was rough code, but over the past 2 years I have honed my skills and a lot of people across the net recognize me for my knowledge in XHTML strict coding. I emphasize strict because there are still a ton of people out there using the transitional attribute just so they can write inadequate code and use tables for layouts. TIME TO UPGRADE TO THE FUTURE PEOPLE !
I am also becoming well versed in most other popular coding languages, javascript, PHP, Ajax, and SQL.

Why XHTML?
XHTML is the future of the web. What it comes down to is this, if you don't get and stay up to date with your code, browser support will eventually end for your code and your site will simply not display in modern browsers.

w3schools wrote: We have reached a point where many pages on the WWW contain "bad" HTML.

XML is a markup language where everything has to be marked up correctly, which results in "well-formed" documents.

XML was designed to describe data and HTML was designed to display data.

Today's market consists of different browser technologies, some browsers run Internet on computers, and some browsers run Internet on mobile phones and hand held. The last-mentioned do not have the resources or power to interpret a "bad" markup language.

Therefore - by combining HTML and XML, and their strengths, we got a markup language that is useful now and in the future - XHTML.

XHTML pages can be read by all XML enabled devices AND while waiting for the rest of the world to upgrade to XML supported browsers, XHTML gives you the opportunity to write "well-formed" documents now, that work in all browsers and that are backward browser compatible !!!