DOCTYPE anyone?
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- StephanieB
Being the complete standards whore I am, I've been running pages through the validator to see how they pan out validity-wise. I've come across one thing that I'd like to bring up here and see if I can get an answer out of someone: Why is it that so many designers don't use a DOCTYPE? Does it break your markup when you do? I know of some instances where it does...Netscape 6's "bug"...but that can be hacked. So why?
Friendly discussion of pros and cons anyone?
- robot90
I know of alot of people who have no idea about DOCTYPES and I have noticed lots of html books don't even give more than a passing mention to doctypes.
I think it's mostly ignorance/lazy coding.
- StephanieB0
That's what I've chalked it up to. I remember when I first started doing this...you know...when animated GIFs were popular...that I didn't use one. Then I found the W3C and it engraved into my brain to use one or you shall go to Designer's Hell, thus I use one.
But seriously, while it might not seem all that important, it actually is, along with the content-type and charset. Remember: If you're not using a DOCTYPE, all you're really writing is Tag Soup. Tag Soup doesn't taste too good. ;)
- kpl0
amen.
different doctypes will cause a browser to render html differently. learned that lesson the hard way.
- StephanieB0
Heh. That is one thing I've found too. I generally use an HTML 4.01 transitional doctype, but I've finally gotten something that validates as strict. Yay for me!