Any advantage of doctype?

  • Thread starter Tommy Desperate
  • Start date
T

Tommy Desperate

I created my website, www.hairloss-reversible.com, with FrontPage 2003. I
notice that many websites have a doctype when I click on View Source. Many
have this specific one: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01
Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

Is there any advantage in putting a doctype at the top of my site in code
view? If there is an advantage, how do I decide on which of the three or more
doctypes to choose from?
 
M

Mike Mueller

From what I know, which is not all-inclusive.

A DocType tells the browser what specifications you designed
the site to follow. This is supposed to allow the broswer
to better render the page to how you designed it, with the
idea being that the page will look the same regardless of
browser. A lack of or incorrect DTD will have the browser
fall back into quirks mode, aka best-guess.

What type do you have? There are 3 flavors for html v4.01

Frameset- if you are using frames, this is the one to choose
Strict- to the letter of the law. Many common terms such as
<p><font color="#ffffff"></font></p> are not in this
version. The correct syntax would be to use a style- <p
style="color: #ffffff"></p>.
Transitional- A little relaxed version of the law. The
above example would go through

Best thing to do is to try validating the page first using
the validaters at w3c.org They will point out where the
errors are, and you can then correct and retry. The
validater will allow you to try different DTDs.


"Tommy Desperate" <[email protected]>
wrote in message
:I created my website, www.hairloss-reversible.com, with
FrontPage 2003. I
: notice that many websites have a doctype when I click on
View Source. Many
: have this specific one: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD
HTML 4.01
: Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
:
: Is there any advantage in putting a doctype at the top of
my site in code
: view? If there is an advantage, how do I decide on which
of the three or more
: doctypes to choose from?
 
C

clintonG

Go to news://microsoft.public.frontpage.client and read " What is a DOCTYPE
and why is it screwing me up?" posted yesterday or the day before.
 
T

Tommy Desperate

Thanks everyone who answered my questions. I now have a better understanding
of doctype use and the type I'll put on my website pages.

I have another question but it is not related specifically to FrontPage.
I'm going to post it under a different subject - something like: Robots -
"Index, Follow."

Maybe you could take a look at this and give me a few pointers. As you can
tell by my questions, I am naive about the complexities of search engine bots
and what they feed on.
 

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