DOCTYPE in new versions of IE

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DOCTYPE in new versions of IE

time to clean up the code

bill

4:40 am on Apr 11, 2001 (gmt 0)

[url=www.webreference.com/dhtml/column51/3.html]Stumbled[/url] across this statement recently:

IE5 Macintosh and IE6Win read DOCTYPE and if a DTD URL is specified, load the DTD and compare your document's syntax against it. If your document does not comply completely with the DTD, a syntax error may be generated.

Does this mean we're going to need to validate ALL of our pages or make custom DTD files? [url=hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/14/index0a.html]WebMonkey[/url] seems to say that IE6 will be capable of switching between DTDs. Maybe this is why Microsoft seems to be easing FrontPage out of the Office XP package...

Edited by: bill

tedster

5:34 am on Apr 11, 2001 (gmt 0)

As I read this, you can omit the DOCTYPE and IE will default to parsing the page as earlier versions did. You would only need to worry if you want to access new possibilities of a more "advanced" DOCTYPE.

bill

1:14 pm on Apr 8, 2001 (gmt 0)

So some of us who might add the DTD to our pages for the purpose of validating them, may have to watch out if our pages do not validate 100%. Sure my templates may validate completely, but maybe I've added some affiliate code or a search box, or maybe a tracking code...or maybe something as innocent as:

This alone would trip an IE6 syntax error. So, our alternative would be to remove the DTD reference or write a custom DTD to link to.