XHTML, CSS & JavaScript Web Developer Applicant Questions

XHTML Web Standards Interview Question

Question:

What is a DTD? What DTD do you generally use? Why? Pros and cons.

Answer

See the bottom half of DTD: the Document Type Declaration

Answer Rating:

1. Completely wrong answer though pretends to know it

2. I don’t know (I give points for honesty), trying unsuccessfully but honestly to
give the right answer
3. Knowledge of the definition, but doesn’t know why they are used.
4. Knowledge of which one to use and why
5. Explanation of Quirks mode versus Regular mode and analysis of which one is
best for different media

Accessibility Interview Question

Question

Tell me some considerations in selecting font size?

Answer

Font sizes should be declared using relative measurement values, such as ems, via a style
sheet, without the use of the term !important. There are issues with browser font size
enlarging which can be rectified via CSS.

Answer Rating

1. uses <font> tag

2. Gives an answer using pixels using CSS
3. Explains that font size should be declared using relative font sizes
4. Explains that font size should be declared using ems or percentages
5. Gives the answer above

CSS Interview Question

Question
a) What are the possible values for the display attribute that are supported by all
browsers?
b) What is the default value for the display attribute for the image element? (what is the
difference between inline and block level elements)
c)What does display: run-in do?
d) Difference between “visibility:hidden” and “display:none”? What are the pros and
cons of using display:none?

Answer

main values: none, block, inline, list-item, run-in

all values: inline | block | list-item | run-in | compact | marker | table | inline-table | table-
row-group | table-header-group | table-footer-group | table-row | table-column-group |
table-column | table-cell | table-caption | none | inherit
default value: inline, block or list-item, depending on the element. The <img> is an inline
element.
Run-in should make the run-in element be the first line of the next sibling block level
element, if it is before a block level element that is not floated or absolutely positioned. If
the next sibling is positioned or floated, then the run-in element will be a block level
element instead of appearing in-line.
PPK’s Quirksmode explains it well. The w3schools lists table display values.
When visibility is set to hidden, the element being hidden still occupies its same place in
the layout of the page. If the display is set to none, the element does not occupy any space
on the page — as if it didn’t exist..

Answer Rating

1. Doesn’t know
2. Knows the answer to A
3. Knows the answer to A and D
4. Knows the answer to A, B and D
5. Knows the answer to C too!

CSS Interview Question

Question

a) What are the five possible values for “position”?

b) What is the default/initial value for “position”?
c) How does the browser determine where to place positioned elements
d) What are the pros and cons of using absolute positioning?
e) if they are really advanced, ask about IE z-index issues with positioned elements.

Answer
a) Values for position: static, relative, absolute, fixed, inherit
b) Static
c) They are placed relative to the next parent element that has absolute or relative value
declared
d) Absolutely positioned elements are removed from the document flow. The positioned
element does not flow around the content of other elements, nor does their content flow
around the positioned element. An absolutely positioned element may overlap other
elements, or be overlapped by them.
e) IE treats a position like a z-index reset, so you have to declare position of static on the
parent element containing the z-indexed elements to have them responsd to z-index
correctly.

Answer Rating

1. Doesn’t know
2. Knows 4 out of 5 answers in part A
3. Knows A & B
4. Knows A, B & C
5. Knows A-D
6. Knows E too

CSS Interview Question

Question:

Write a snippet of CSS that will display a paragraph in blue in older browsers, red in
newer browsers, green in IE6 and black in IE7

Possible Answer:

#content p{color:blue}
html>body #content p {color:red}
* html #content p{color:green}
html>body #content p {*color:black;}

Answer Rating

1. Doesn’t know
2. Knows how to declare one color, but no hacks
3. knows the html>body hack and * html hack
4. Knows all the hacks, but doesn’t validate or uses conditional comments in the
HTML
5. Gives you the right answer and explains why the CSS won’t validate, or, uses a
valid hack, other than conditional IE comments, instead of the above answer.

Basic Javascript Interview Question

Question:

What is the correct way to include JavaScript into your HTML?

Answer:

See Including Javascript in XHTML for answers.

Answer Rating:

1. <a href=”javscript:function()”> - and other incorrect answers

2. verbally explains the theory but doesn’t know how to do it
3. correct explanation using inline event handlers or inline code
4. discusses and knows how to implement javascript event listeners
5. Explainst how you include JS within an XHTML document and ensure it
validates using CDATA, explains

Basic Javascript Array / XHTML Form Interview Question

Question

Are the following all equal, and, if so, what would your code look like to make the
following all equal the same thing:

alert(document.forms["myform"].elements["field"].value);
alert(document.forms[1].elements[1].value);
alert(document.myform.field.value);

answer:

<form name="myform" method="post" action="something">

<input name="anything" value="anything" type="something" />
<input name="field" value="something" type="something" />
</form>

Answer includes knowing that the form is the second form on the page, and that the
field input element is the second element within that form.

Answer Rating

1. Doesn’t know how to code forms and doesn’t know that the first index of an array
is 0.
2. Knows either how to code forms with valid XHTML or that array starts at 0, but
not both.
3. Knows how to code forms but not correctly, but omits something like doesn’t
know that the form needs to be the second one on the page, and the element is the
 second one in the form. Would know how to do it if they actually put thought into
it.
4. Codes the form correctly, but uses ID instead of name
5. Codes everything correctly

JavaScript Interview Question

Question:

How do you dynamically add a paragraph with stylized content to a page?

Possible Answer:

newParagraph = document.createElement('p');
newParagraph.setAttribute('class', 'myClass');
newText = document.createTextNode('this is a new paragraph');
newParagraph.appendChild(newText);
myLocation = document.getElementById('parent_of_new_paragraph);
myLocation.appendChild(newParagraph);

Answer Rating:

1. Wrong Answer (i.e. “you can’t”), I don’t know.

2. Use JavaScript, with no knowledge or incomplete knowledge of how that is done.
Suggesting innerHTML, but not really knowing. Or explanation of accessibilty
issues surrounding this.
3. Able to explain how you create a node, add content to the node, add a class
attributes to that element, and then add that node as a child of the parent element
(the above example)
4. Explanation of how to do it (worth 3 points) and explanation as to issues that arise
when doing it, such as screen readers not knowing that text has changed, IE6 and
IE7 not applying styles included with added content, not duplicating IDs, etc.
5. Has no clue how to do it to start, but can figure it out with guidance: extra points
for the quick learner!

Other questions ideas:

Q: How do you organize your CSS? How do you come up with id and class names (what
naming conventions do you use)?
A: While there are no right answers, there are best practices. Issues to look for are not
having div mania, no inline CSS, no presentational markup, minimal use of classes,
understanding the CSS cascade.

Q: What do you think of hacks? When should you use them? If you use them, how do
you maintain them? What can be done to avoid needing to use box-model hacks? (if they
aren’t pros, you can ask them what is the issue with x-browsers and the box model)
Q: What are the pros and cons of using tables for layout? Do you use tables? What are
the pros and cons of tableless design? How do you generally layout your pages?
A: check for them NOT using tables

Q: Check to ensure that they separate structure and semantics first from presentation
later? Do not ask about this during HTML, but do in webstandards.

Q: What are some deprecated elements and attributes that you use, and in what instances
do you use them?
A: List of deprecated elements and attributes.

Q: What is involved in making a website accessible? What are arguments you use to
convince others to invest in making their web site accessible.
A: See Making the web Accessible. Making sites accessible also makes them more
search engine friendly (saves money), makes your pages accessible to the 20% of the
population that has some type of disability (so you can make more money) and it’s the
law in many places.

Q: Define what web standards mean to you? How do you implement web standards?

Q: In CSS, how can you make a form elments background-color change when the user is
entering text? will this work in all browsers?

Q: How can you target an element in your HTML using the DOM?

XHTML Test

XHTML is fairly straight forward and anyone who could deal with the CSS test should
be able to breeze through this; however just to be thorough I wanted to go through this
exercise.

• Download the XHTML Test Questions

Answers

1. There is no document type declaration.

2. The title should appear between head elements.
3. The closing heading tag is incorrect. It should be an h1.
4. The paragraph containing the non-breaking space entity, &nbsp;, should be
removed as we should not be using HTML elements for layout purposes.
5. The & should be written as &amp; or &#38;
6. Bonus points for mentioning that a more descriptive page title or the use of meta
data would increase the chances of the page being usefully indexed by search
engines.