So does that mean if I put "XHTML 1.0 Transitional that any code that is of either HTML 4.0 or XHTML 1.0 will be accepted by validators?
forgive me if some of this is a little introductory.
A document type or DTD defines the syntax for an application of SGML (in the case of HTML, which is an application of SGML) or XML (xhtml is an application of XML).
What does that mean? it means that a DTD defines what elements are part of the language, what attributes those elements can take, and some more arcane issues that aren't all that relevant here.
xhtml 1.0 transitional was designed to include many of the aspects of HTML 4 that were planned to be phased out (these are referred to as deprecated elements or attributes). xhtml 1.0 strict does not include those attributes and elements.
The idea was that it would be relatively easy to transition from HTML 4 to xhtml 1.0, because you would not need to remove deprecated elements and attribute from your code, merely transform your code into XML syntax (empty elements closed with a /> not a >, such as img elements, style elements and so on), element names in lower case, attribute values quoted, all optionally closed elements like p and li in HTML explicitly closed with </p> or </li> and some other stuff that you may not have to worry about.
I see my validator is presently set at HTML 4.0 Transitional so I assume that means that the validator will accept anything between HTML 3.2 (which I believe is the version just prior to 4.0) or 4.0.
Not quite. What it will accept is documents marked up in accordance with the HTML 4.0 Transitional doctype rules. These do not entirely conform to HTML 3.2
Hope this is in some ways useful
John
John Allsopp
:: westciv :: http://www.westciv.com/ software, courses, resources for a standards based web :: style master blog :: http://westciv.typepad.com/dog_or_higher/ :: webessentials Sept 30 - October 1 2004 Sydney Australia
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