Flash & the Doctype
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- techma
So, as I am still fairly novice to the web side of design, I'm wondering if anyone can tell me why many great flash sites don't use a Doctype. I open up the source and all I see is the html tag in the beginning. I thought it was mandatory to use the doctype. Is it that the developers of these sites just don't give a shit about following standards? Or is there a valid other reason that I'm ignorant of? Any comments or even links to articles on this particular topic (if there are any) would be greatly appreciated.
- Terminal270
I think those people don't bother with it as theres no real point. If the main content is all inside a flash movie you only need as little html as poss around the movie to get it to display in a browser.
- restlessdesign0
A lot of times people strip out the doctype because it can make things display the way they aren't supposed to (such as verical centering with tables).
There's no reason not to though. Flash sites should be using SWFObject (or some other type of Javascript bypass for the IE ActiveX issue) anyways, so it's possible to validate all the way up to XHTML 1.1 (like my site =])
- moth0
They're just sloppy developers really... You can make as many HTML errors as you want, but to exclude the doctype is a pretty drastic one.
- techma0
My first idea about it was what terminal27 was saying. But being a beginner, I wasn't sure if there were other possible reasons. I myself want to learn to do everything as up to standards as I can.
- techma0
By the way, very nice work Sweeney.
- moth0
See here:
http://alistapart.com/articles/f…Although I don't know how recent that will be.
- moth0
This looks a little more recent:
http://blog.deconcept.com/2005/0…Of course, if you're using flash, the W3C will always be chewing on your nuts for it.
- techma0
thanks all for the responses so far, and thanks moth for the articles
- moth0
I recall removing the Doctype to remove an iFrame bug back in the day.
I think it basically forces the browser into quirks mode or something.. I'm not as read up on this as I should be.
- UndoUndo0
the doctype defines how the page will be interpreted by the browser - your code should match the spec for the doc type you use if it doesnt then it jumps into Quirks Mode - which is 'I will do my best to read this page mode'
:)
- restlessdesign0
Bahhumbug. The W3C is a bunch of dorks now...