Rob Crowther wrote:
Browsers have never used DOCTYPES, therefore the validation of whether or not a document conforms (or not) to a DOCTYPE has no impact on whether or not a browser will correctly parse, interpret or display it.
I think that is an over-simplification, and one that is misleading if it gets into the wrong hands. If a document conforms to the DTD specified in its DOCTYPE directive, and if that DTD is one of the relatively small set which the W3C recognise, then the probability that a browser will correctly parse, interpret and display that file is considerably higher than if it does not so conform. See Benjamin H-L's recent quote on this topic, from the W3C site :
Why should I validate my HTML pages? One of the important maxims of computer programming is: "Be conservative in what you produce; be liberal in what you accept." Browsers follow the second half of this maxim by accepting Web pages and trying to display them even if they're not legal HTML. Usually this means that the browser will try to make educated guesses about what you probably meant. The problem is that different browsers (or even different versions of the same browser) will make different guesses about the same illegal construct; worse, if your HTML is really pathological, the browser could get hopelessly confused and produce a mangled mess, or even crash. That's why you want to follow the first half of the maxim by making sure your pages are legal HTML. The best way to do that is by running your documents through one or more HTML validators.
Ex. http://validator.w3.org/docs/help.html#what-is-it Philip Taylor ______________________________________________________________________ css-discuss [css-d@lists.css-discuss.org] http://www.css-discuss.org/mailman/listinfo/css-d List wiki/FAQ -- http://css-discuss.incutio.com/ List policies -- http://css-discuss.org/policies.html Supported by evolt.org -- http://www.evolt.org/help_support_evolt/
