What doctype should I use ?

G

graphicsxp

Hi,

I've been using the following doctype for my website:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://
www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

When I use the W3 validator I get 17 errors, but the good news is that
they are all easy to fix.

However with their tool, I have the option to select xhtml1-strict.dtd
and this time I get 28 errors. Some of them are not so easy to fix.

My question is, what doctype should I use anyway ? Ive been using
transitional.dtd only because my IDE (Visual Studio) added this one
for me and I never really thought about it until I decided to validate
my pages.

Thanks
 
A

Adrienne Boswell

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed graphicsxp
Hi,

I've been using the following doctype for my website:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://
www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

When I use the W3 validator I get 17 errors, but the good news is that
they are all easy to fix.

However with their tool, I have the option to select xhtml1-strict.dtd
and this time I get 28 errors. Some of them are not so easy to fix.

My question is, what doctype should I use anyway ? Ive been using
transitional.dtd only because my IDE (Visual Studio) added this one
for me and I never really thought about it until I decided to validate
my pages.

Thanks

You should be using HTML Strict.
 
C

cwdjrxyz

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed graphicsxp
<[email protected]> writing in (e-mail address removed):










You should be using HTML Strict.  

I agree. And notice this is html 4.1 strict and not xhtml 1 strict.
Any kind of xhtml will be served only as ordinary html unless you
configure your server to serve true xhtml. This might involve
associating the mime type for xhtml with an extension such as .xhtml
since .html usually is used for ordinary html. When you serve xhtml
properly, you will find IE browsers can not handle it. Thus you must
do some elaborate jumps through hoops to get IE to view the xhtml
page. One way is to use header exchange to see if the browser will
accept xhtml. If not, the page is rewritten as html 4 strict using
regular expressions etc. Unless you are on a private network that does
not use IE browsers, using true xhtml served properly is a lot of
work. The main problems are setting up the server and writing the
mentioned header code. Once that is done, serving true xhtml is not
very difficult. Also note that when served properly, an xml parser is
used that tolerates nearly no errors. A single error such as not
closing something often will give an error message from the xml parser
rather than a view, perhaps somewhat distorted, of the page.
 
J

Jukka K. Korpela

Adrienne said:
My question is, what doctype should I use anyway ? Ive been using
transitional.dtd only because my IDE (Visual Studio) added this one
for me and I never really thought about it until I decided to
validate my pages.
[...]
You should be using HTML Strict.

I can't agree without knowing the intrinsics of the tool used. It depends on
what kind of markup it generates and whether it lets the author to select
doctype (instead of forcing him to change it manually using another
program).

Then again, we might ask why someone using a bulky and costly program for
web page creation should additionally need to use a simple free checker to
verify that the generated code is valid...
 
G

graphicsxp

Thanks for the answers.

My pages are now valide using xhtml1-transitional. But according to
you, I should validate it with strict mode. I'll work on it, but I
doubt it's possible.

Jukka, the reason I use a free tool, is simply because at design time
my aspx pages are not rendered as html yet. So it needs to be done at
runtime, which to my knowledge VS doesn't do. Besides it's not costly
depending on which version you use. Just saying:)
 
A

Athel Cornish-Bowden

Thanks for the answers.

My pages are now valide using xhtml1-transitional. But according to
you, I should validate it with strict mode. I'll work on it, but I
doubt it's possible.

Jukka, the reason I use a free tool, is simply because at design time
my aspx pages are not rendered as html yet. So it needs to be done at
runtime, which to my knowledge VS doesn't do. Besides it's not costly
depending on which version you use. Just saying:)

The cheapest version listed at
http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products is offered at 799
USD. That seems pretty costly to me, but maybe you've more money than
you need.

However, I doubt if Jukka was wondering why you used a free product to
validate your HTML. Probably he was wondering why anyone would use an
expensive tool to generate HTML that couldn't be assumed to be
error-free. I haven't used any of these tools since about 1997, but
what I read about them suggests that they still cannot be trusted. In
view of the name of the company that produces Virtual Studio I'd be
very surprised if it is the exception.
 
G

graphicsxp

well obviously you're not going to use Visual Studio if you only do
web page design.... It's all relative...
I do .net programming, including wpf applications, web services and
asp.net websites. So I really don't see what other tool I could
use :)
let's be objective a little bit, VS is definitely a great IDE when
you're into programming (not for graphics design)

thanks for all the replies.
 
J

Jenn

graphicsxp said:
well obviously you're not going to use Visual Studio if you only do
web page design.... It's all relative...
I do .net programming, including wpf applications, web services and
asp.net websites. So I really don't see what other tool I could
use :)
let's be objective a little bit, VS is definitely a great IDE when
you're into programming (not for graphics design)

thanks for all the replies.

I like Photoshop for graphics design.. and Bryce 3d just for fun.
 
B

Beauregard T. Shagnasty

Jenn said:
I like Photoshop for graphics design.. and Bryce 3d just for fun.

Photoshop is fine for "make pretty." Expensive. The GIMP is free.

But you still don't know what a DOCTYPE is.
 
J

Jenn

Beauregard said:
Photoshop is fine for "make pretty." Expensive. The GIMP is free.

Adobe photoshop is an industry standard program, along with Flash, and
similar other programs.
 
B

Beauregard T. Shagnasty

Jenn said:
Adobe photoshop is an industry standard program, along with Flash,
and similar other programs.

... like The GIMP.

<snipproof>
But you still don't know what a DOCTYPE is.
</snipproof>
 
D

dorayme

"asdf said:
Rubbish.

... any product from a
propietary software house could not possibly be described as "standard".

Why not? It is a perfectly understandable and true statement that
"Adobe photoshop is an industry standard program" the truth maker
being that photo manipulation programs are almost universally
compared to Photoshop and rightly so.
 
D

dorayme

"Beauregard T. Shagnasty said:
.. like The GIMP.

<snipproof>
But you still don't know what a DOCTYPE is.
</snipproof>

And you, for no discernible useful reason, continue to hassle
this lady with schoolyard bully taunts.
 
B

Beauregard T. Shagnasty

dorayme said:
And you, for no discernible useful reason, continue to hassle
this lady with schoolyard bully taunts.

Kissy, kissy...

As long as she keeps posting misinformation, someone has to...
 
A

Andy Dingley

The file formats *might* be "industry standard" but any product from a
propietary software house could not possibly be described as "standard".

Oh, it could be (and for Photoshop, I'd agree that it is).

I take your position. It's the _file_formats_ that need to be the
standard. However that's not where we are at present. Photoshop is
"the industry standard" of programs in use for this task, of user
interfaces for people who do this work, and as a buzzword on the CV of
people hoping to get jobs working in this field. That's not how it
ought to be, but it's where we and the industry are today.

Besides which, GIMP is a user-hostile bag of nails. I'd pay money to
avoid using that.
 
D

dorayme

"Beauregard T. Shagnasty said:
Kissy, kissy...

As long as she keeps posting misinformation, someone has to...

Has to what? Act like you? Not so. See Adrienne's posts if you
need guidance on how not to be a jerk but still reject
assertions. Obviously, the huge gap between kissy kissy and Abu
Ghraib escapes the mean spirited early man brain. You
Neanderthalic schmuck.
 
R

rf

dorayme said:
And you, for no discernible useful reason, continue to hassle
this lady with schoolyard bully taunts.

dorayme, this "lady" is an non-educatable bloody moron stuck in the last
millennium where her brain last stalled.

You seem to have been sucked in by her in a big way. More the pity, I
thought you had more discerning tastes.

Look at all the threads this "lady" has participated in. Somebody says
something. Jenn says something. A pissing match ensues and it's always an
argument between her 1990's style of coding and the 'this century' stuff the
rest of us use, or her total misunderstanding of the discussion to hand. In
Every One Of The Threads. Every Time.

In each thread somebody has had a swipe at her. Except you. And possibly
also except Adrienne, although I could see her patience dropping to very low
levels on occasion, but she is too naturally nice to be forcefully nasty.
Even the very quite regulars have dipped in with their disapproval.

And just look at the sites she comes forward with in her support. Her sites
are total trash. I for one would NEVER offer something like that up to a
customer and expect them to pay me for it. The other external sites the
quotes form time to time have all been at one time or another lambasted here
and elsewhere as being not bloody good at all. She is stuck in the standard
lemming syndrome

The girl is a bloody loser. I really believe she may be the long lost sister
of Richard the Stupid, she certainly posts the same lame way he does.

Killfile the idiot. Move on in life and let's resume our regular playful
attacks on each other.
 
D

Doug Miller

The girl is a bloody loser. I really believe she may be the long lost sister
of Richard the Stupid, she certainly posts the same lame way he does.[/QUOTE]

That's completely uncalled for IMHO. Yes, her notions of what constitutes
appropriate HTML coding may be from the 1990s, but she knows what she is
doing, and is able to articulate reasons for doing what she does -- neither of
which is true of RtS, who simply fumbles blindly without the merest vestige of
a clue as to what he's doing or why.

Nor does Jenn post with the same arrogantly ignorant belligerence that
characterizes many of RtS's posts.

I believe she is educable; RtS has clearly demonstrated that he is not.
 

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