DTD determination

[newbiehelp]

How to determine DTD and charset to a html page whether is it transitional, strict or frameset? Frameset is understandable, when use Frameset, use Frameset DTD. I went thru w3c.org and read the content, but is very confusing. For example, I had one page with Html 4.0 Transitional DTD and when checked on validator, it said it is XHTML 1.0 Strict.My point is how to determine whether it is strict or transitional? Any feedback appreciated. Thanks.

[tedster]

The W3C has been involved in a "clean-up" of HTML -- essentially they hope to move all presentational mark-up out of the document and into a stylesheet of some kind. The idea is to leave behind only content, semantic content itself, and not any instructions on how a user agent should render the content.

In order to do this, many elements and attributes were deprecated - we have a list on this thread:
[webmasterworld.com...]

If your mark-up is using any deprecated elements, then it's transitional. If you avoid all deprecated elements, then you are writing strict mark-up.

[newbiehelp]

Thankyou. That was interesting.

[tedster]

You're welcome. My own opinion is that learning strict mark-up is THE important step today, rather than learning xhtml -- especially if the xhtml is transitional. Do most sites really need to be using a subset of xml for some reason? I don't think so.

Learning strict mark-up, nad learning to validate, will teach anyone more about html than they can imagine. It has transformed my page creation in many ways, and all for the better.

No longer do I confuse html with a Quark document. No longer am I working towards "just make it look right". Instead, I am very attentive to the meanings and associations betwee elements that m page creates - and this helps search engines make better sene of my pages, because they aren't wading through a pile of hacks I threw in just to make the page look right on screen.

As an example, using tables for layout purposes can create two phrases that relate to each other visually, but they get far removed from each other in the markup. But when I use stylesheets for presentation, I can preserve the semantic relationships more easily.

At any rate, choose the DTD you want to align with first, and then get to creating your mark-up. You also may want to learn about how today's browsers have Quirks Mode and Standards Mode [webmasterworld.com]. Both modes are triggered by the DTD and can trip you up in various browsers - if you aren't informed ahead of time, it can be highly confusing.

[newbiehelp]

Thankyou so much. There is so much of information and it will take some time to adapt to this new standards. Is there any site which tells about Strict mark-up?

[tedster]

Your best bet for rapid learning is hands on, espcially now that you have the lists of deprecated elements to guide you.

Write your page, place a strict DTD at the top and then validate your document with the W3C's free validation service [validator.w3.org].

In this forum we often discuss validator errore, so if you get an error message and after tryinh you can't figure it out, just post here.

Also, if there's an approach you're accustomed to but it involved transitional code you can't figure a substitute for, again, we're here. Following this approach, in no time at all you'll be on top of strict mark-up.