Dear Johnathan
I would recommend you read this short article.
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/doctype/
IMHO the setting of a DOCTYPE is an essential step in the migration to standards based web development. You have a valid point that if you want to simply set a font-family or size attribute for pages, and that is all you want to do, then the doctype you employ is largely irrelevant. But it should be mentioned that it would be unusual in a site's design/re-design, that this is all you want to accomplish with css. To be certain that browsers display the presentational instructions consistently, a doctype is essential to ensure browsers are in 'Standards' mode and not 'quirks' mode.
Not all browsers implement the css specification fully. We are still stuck with workarounds where browsers get their interpretation of the rules 'wrong'. Even the major browsers interpret the basic box model differently.
Hopefully Mr Zeldman in his article will help make this clear.
He always makes perfect sense to me.
Peter Goddard
Web Developer/IT
PSI Global Ltd
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: 04 October 2004 12:17
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: Patrick H. Lauke
Subject: Re: [WSG] doctypes, quirks/standards mode and positioning
"Patrick H. Lauke" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote on 04/10/2004 10:54:20
AM:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> > OK, Consider this very simple HTML document:
> ...
> > How could leaving out the doctype make such a definite difference to
such
> > a simple page?
>
> The crucial part of my answer was: "If you know for sure that the markup
> *is going to be invalid*"
>
> The example you provide is of valid markup. I tried corrupting the code,
> but interestingly, on Firefox and Opera, even when the markup is
> blatantly broken, the doctype keeps the browser in standards mode (or
> almost-standards mode, as the case may be). Interesting...seems the
> wrong behaviour to me, but still interesting...
Thanks for the clarification. However, I still don't understand WHY a page
requires a doctype declaration (in my case HTML 4.0 transitional) just to
make a font-size style cascade from body through to td.
To recap: here are two pages, identical except for the presence or absence
of a doctype declaration:
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/sub/dev/doctype_test/doctype.html
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/sub/dev/doctype_test/no_doctype.html
Regards,
Jonathan Cooper
Manager of Information / Website
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Sydney, Australia
http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au
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