What is this about?

Can someone please enlighten me on what this is and does.

[Feralsteve]

Hiyas
I've been wondering for a while what this stuff means (below). I don't have it on my site and would like to know if it would help.. I'm ranking very low on google "511" good as a persentage but whos going to look through that many pages to get to mine :-(
Thanks
Steve

<!!!!!!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">

<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1">
<meta name="generator" content="Adobe GoLive 4">

hehe any this

[SmallTime]

Doctype tells the browser what version of html you are giving it.
[oreillynet.com...]

the doctype is good to have, if you know what it should be - ie it can help the browser display properly, or mess it up if it is wrong. Also helpful when it is time to validate your html.

the http-equiv tells it what form it is in, recommended even for default iso-8859-1

The generator tag I think of as a plug by the software maker, don't think it serves any purpose

[Marshall]

Feralsteve,

visit [w3c.org...] They're the people who make the rules. You'll find all the information you need there.

[Feralsteve]

Thanks guys,
I'll check it out :-)