W3C 4.01 classification

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W3C 4.01 classification

does a particular one have the broadest browser parsing correct

caine

12:55 am on Jul 3, 2003 (gmt 0)

Some one at work ask me about why some of the pages did'nt look good, as in aspects of the page overlapped, then he went on about W3C, once i told him the page was 4.01 transitional valid - blank look. Browser NN 4.78, looks spot on in op5, op6, op7, ie5, ie6.

Question - does 4.01 strict mean that a page that shows proper in I.E. and Opera, will also look good in N 4.78, which i was designing for a couple of years ago? Should i be building strict 4.01 code?

tedster

1:21 am on Jul 3, 2003 (gmt 0)

The fact that you use a valid DTD at the top of the page means that modern browsers will go into "standards" mode, rather than "quirks" mode which simulates old, non-standard behavior. But even with validated HTML 4 strict, there are still cross browser oddities to cope with, especially with the kind of thing you described, Caine.

Nevertheless, I am now developing in "strict" HTML, just to break all my bad habits from HTML 3.2 coding. I thought about going XHTML 1.1, and I still may, but with XHTML shaping up as a major break with the past, I think I'll probably wait until we are at that stage, sthaer than learn and unlearn XHTML 1.1

g1smd

8:55 pm on Jul 3, 2003 (gmt 0)

The thing most likely to break NN 4.xx is the CSS.

You should export the CSS to an external file and call it with a one line instruction in the <head> section.

Many people have always recommended using:

<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet" src="/path/file.css">

however, NN 4 can still "see" the CSS if you use that one.

To hide the CSS from that version of the browser, and stop the overlapping content/images problems, use this instead:

This latter version will serve a plain version to NN 4 users, but the layout will not be badly corrupted. The site will still appear as you intended in Mozilla, modern Netscape, Infernal Exploder, etc.