Difference between caps and no caps in meta data

[Crumbles]

Can you please tell me the difference between:


<meta Name"keywords" content="Magento, Varien, E-commerce" />

<meta NAME" . . . />

<meta DESCRIPTION "..../>description

meta description "..../>

I see them both ways when viewing source of sites.

Thank you.

[xhtmlcoder]

In valid XHTML you don't see the mixed case or uppercase (she accepts case sensitive lowercase for those attributes). XHTML documents must use lower case for all HTML element and attribute names. This difference is necessary because XML is case-sensitive e.g. <li> and <LI> are different tags.

It also depends on the markup language, and rule of thumb is; always use lowercase for the META and its attributes; <meta name="keywords" content="..." /> would be the correct format. The value of the content, i.e. keyword list is also case-sensitive but can be mixed.

[ralph.m]

One thing they all have in common is that they are wrong.

Rather than

Name"keywords"
NAME"
DESCRIPTION "

and so on, it should be

name="keywords"
name="description"

and so on.

Tip: always use lower case, no matter what—in code, file names etc. It's neater and saves potential problems that you don't need to be worrying about.

[Crumbles]

Thank you. I've seen the caps used often - it seems especially so on what I think of as "newer professional sites". I thought it was a more current way of doing it for HTML5 or CSS5!

[ralph.m]

Whenever I see capitals in code like that, I instantly think "amateur". Probably unfair, but still, lower case is a good rule to follow.

[kohoutek]

Thank you. I've seen the caps used often - it seems especially so on what I think of as "newer professional sites". I thought it was a more current way of doing it for HTML5 or CSS5!

When you see caps, it's often likely the result of a site's code having been generated automatically with some obsolete IDE or website builder.

[xhtmlcoder]

I think you meant CSS 3, as CSS 5 is even a twinkle in Paul's eye. Usually it shows poor craftsmanship or pollution from an editor either liveware or software like both Ralph and Maleika mentioned if you get such 'inconstancy'. Since those examples suggest attempted XHTML grammar they ought to be lower case. Even most HTML5 material recommends using lowercase. In the age of dinosaurs sometimes authors wrote uppercase for tags and lowercase for attributes but it was a pointless exercise.

Well, modern looking outwardly can drastically differ from the syntax under the hood so don't always be fooled by visually stunning façades and the painted eyelids as they may be covering deeper cracks.