Peter Goddard wrote on 04/10/2004 11:10:07 PM: > 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.
Thanks, Peter. The article was indeed helpful. I sort of knew what doctypes were for but I didn't realise that something as basic as having text in a table cell inherit a style from the body required a valid doctype. Now I do. :-) The trouble is, the (CMS-driven) website I look after has some pages (or page templates) with an incomplete doctype: <!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> ... and most with NO doctype at all! (I didn't build this site, by the way; when it was created, I'd never even HEARD of CSS!) I briefly added the HTML 4.01 Transitional doctype to the main template the other day, but it made the pages almost unreadable (tiny, tiny text), so I had to take it out again. Oh well, looks like I'll have to clone the template, add the doctype and go through the stylesheets bit by bit, checking on the front-end as I go. I'm sure you'll hear from me again. :-/ Regards, Jonathan Cooper Manager of Information / Website Art Gallery of New South Wales Sydney, Australia http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au This e-mail message is intended only for the addressee(s) and contains information which may be confidential. If you are not the intended recipient please advise the sender by return email, do not use or disclose the contents, and delete the message and any attachments from your system. Unless specifically indicated, this email does not constitute formal advice or commitment by the sender or the Art Gallery of NSW (ABN 24 934 492 575) or its related entities. ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help ******************************************************
