doctype tag problem with Netscape 6.2?

Forum Moderators: open

Message Too Old, No Replies

doctype tag problem with Netscape 6.2?

Holy ugly page!

zoidberg

8:47 pm on Jan 8, 2002 (gmt 0)

I just downloaded Netscape 6.2.1, onto my work computer, (I have 6.1 at home). However, looking at the site I maintain in 6.2 was awful! (6.1 was fine)

All <p> text had a blank line above and below it within table cells, and every graphic on the page had a 5-10 pixel space beneath it. Needless to say my menubar wasn't looking too hot.

I tried tweaking the html to no avail, and finally just started deleting parts of the page to isolate the problem.

It turns out it was my doctype tag:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

Does this look correct?

The site didn't even have them when I took over, but I read here that they could be important for SEO, so I added this one that was supposedly pretty standard. The page looks fine in every other browser I have tried.

Could this be a bug in NS6.2?
Did I do something stupid?
Here I was thinking doctypes didn't really do anything with regular html.

Thanks

Marshall

8:57 pm on Jan 8, 2002 (gmt 0)

zoidberg,

There is a bug in NN6. Remove the second portion of the doctype tag for it to render correctly. Only use
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML4.01 Transitional//EN">

rcjordan

9:03 pm on Jan 8, 2002 (gmt 0)

Didn't I read here somewhere that one browser has problems if there's a linebreak in the doctype tag?

zoidberg

9:39 pm on Jan 8, 2002 (gmt 0)

Phew, Thanks Marshall,

That's much better now.
Nothing like seeing ones' site ripping itself apart to cause anxiety attacks. =)

Marshall

11:50 pm on Jan 8, 2002 (gmt 0)

zoidberg,

You're welcome.

Hey RC - Not sure about that. I don't recall it here, but that's not to say it doesn't exist.

gmiller

10:40 am on Jan 13, 2002 (gmt 0)

Basically, this means there's a bug in your page, and using the full DOCTYPE disables the "bugwards compatibility" mode.

Your page probably isn't compatible with the defaults mandated by the CSS specs.

tedster

9:53 am on Mar 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

Found another approach to this DTD problem in NN6.2

www.evolt.org/article/css-d/17/4427/

Seems that even with validated code, Netscape only wants to see one particular URL -- even though the two URLs have identical content (now ThAT"S weird!)

What Netscape 6.2 likes is this:

[color=blue][b]<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/REC-html401-19991224/loose.dtd">[/b][/color]

And this one flakes out - particulary in rendering tables:

[color=blue][b]<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">[/b][/color]

leogah

7:22 pm on Mar 17, 2002 (gmt 0)

The exact DOCTYPEs that get compatibility mode changed sometime between 6.0 and 6.2. The new behaviour is to give only some known DOCTYPEs compatibility behaviour. HTML 4.01 Transitional without a URL is probably the favourite. I'm fairly sure both the types in the evolt article get strict mode.

A lot of the time, just adding a style rule like td > img {display : block} will cure those tables.