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Re: Is doctype really important

for

From: Andrew.Arch@visionaustralia.org.au
Date: Mar 15, 2004 10:36PM


I understood that 'doctype' actually gives you more insurance about how
your page will display now that IE looks for it.

E.g. "if you use the following Doctype on new pages ...<!DOCTYPE HTML
PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Strict file://EN">... users with IE 6 will
have their browsers automatically switched into standards-compliant mode
and your pages will be rendered according to the standard -- which,
happily, is how Netscape 6 renders the code as well" [Jeffery Veen, IE 6
Switches to Standards, 2001-
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/14/index0a.html &
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/14/index0a_page2.html?tw=authoring]

Andrew




Chris Price
<chris.price@choc To: < <EMAIL REMOVED> >
taw.co.uk> cc:
Subject: Is doctype really important
15/03/2004 12:03
PM
Please respond to
webaim-forum






In the WAG guidelines we are told that a page should "validate to published
formal grammars" and recommends including a doctype.

I have found that a doctype definitely makes a difference when relying on
style sheets for layout but many commercial sites don't include a doctype
and I can only presume they don't see the need for one.

How important is a doctype in terms of accessibility and can the lack of
one
make any real difference when it comes to a table based layout.

--
Chris Price


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