Once upon a time *Viken Karaguesian* wrote:
[color=blue]
> Hello all,
>
> I'm somewhat of a newbie to webscripting. I've made a couple of websites in
> the past with WYSIWYG software, but now I'm much more interested in manual
> scripting. I have some questions about DOCTYPE:
>
> 1. Is a doctype statement *required*, or is it just "strongly suggested"? I
> would probably be using a Transitional doctype.[/color]
A: It's *required* if you want the page to validate, and even if not
it's "strongly suggested".
Use a full doctype (with the link)
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
[color=blue]
> 2. I understand that in a frameset I must use a Framset Doctype ststement,
> but what about the individual pages within the frameset? Must I use the
> Frameset Doctype statement in those pages as well? Would they even have a
> doctype at all, or is the Frameset doctype enough?[/color]
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">
Goes only in the frameset file, transitional to all other individual
pages.
[color=blue]
> 3. Does a doctype statement actually *do* anything, or is it just a
> declaration that you're following a standard?[/color]
Yes, it does. It makes the browsers render the pages without guessing
what they should look like, when rendering them in Standard Mode and
not in Quirks Mode.
[color=blue]
> I ask question #3 because none of my websites currently have a DOCTYPE
> statement, but inserting a DOCTYPE statement sometimes screws up the
> formatting of the page. DIV's don't line up, borders aren't always right,
> JavaScripts (that I've downloaded) don't work the same way. Also, horizontal
> scroll bars show up where they weren't before. But when I validate the page,
> the validator doesn't show anything wrong with the elements that are
> affected.
>
> For instance: In my personal homepage, I have a <div> with an orange dotted
> border that's lined up within a frame. It lines up nicely the way I intended
> it. But when I insert the <Transitional> doctype, the div stretches across
> the page and the text doesn't fit right.
>
> So I'm just wondering how important they are. Eventually I want to validate
> all my pages and include doctypes. Just in case anyone is interested, here
> are two of my sites. Thanks in advance for any replies.
>
>
http://home.comcast.net/~vikenk
>
http://www.sayatnova.com[/color]
Have you really tried to validate your pages? Have you ever looked on
your pages with any other browser than IE? If not, you should. The
front page for home.comcast.net/~vikenk looks very emty in mozilla,
and that's *not* Mozilla's fault :)
Add the doctype declarations and then validate on
http://validator.w3.org/ (HTML)
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/ (CSS)
You have several serious errors in your CSS.
--
/Arne
Now killing all top posters and posters who don't quote
* How to post:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/usenet/brox.html
* From Google:
http://www.safalra.com/special/googlegroupsreply/
-------------------------------------------------------------
