Choosing a DOCTYPE

**Sean** · 04-10-2007, 12:00 PM

So that your site can be properly validated for standards - each page on your site requires a document type declaration which begins at the top of every XHTML page and and tells a validator which version of HTML to use in checking the document's syntax.

The 2 most popular DOCTYPEs i have seen for developers wanting to accomplish 100% validation is:

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

and

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">

Where the first one declares the page XHTML 1.0 Strict and the second one declares the page XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
Of the 2 i personally use Transitional more as i find it alot more friendly when coding complex sites in 100% CSS.

There is also HTML DOCTYPEs for developers not using XHTML but now adays i think every one serious about Web Site validation is using XHTML

**Fragalot** · 04-10-2007, 10:16 PM

Quote:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>{title}</title>
<script src="script/prototype.js"></script>
<script src="script/custom.js"></script>
<link href="css/application.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" />
</head>
<body>
<div id="wrapper">
</div>
</body>
</html>

that's what I use alot lately.
using Transitional on this example because of the target="" in links.
Strict nolonger allows for target, so ... either you find a way arround it, or use transitional.

**Sean** · 04-10-2007, 10:20 PM

I use Javascript for external links so that my pages still Validate:

Code:

function externalLinks() { 
 if (!document.getElementsByTagName) return; 
 var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName("a"); 
 for (var i=0; i<anchors.length; i++) { 
   var anchor = anchors[i]; 
   if (anchor.getAttribute("href") && 
       anchor.getAttribute("rel") == "external") 
     anchor.target = "_blank"; 
 } 
} 
window.onload = externalLinks;

And the URL:

Code:

<a href="" rel="external">anchor</a>

The target attribute is no longer valid.

**Fragalot** · 04-11-2007, 12:46 AM

sure, but JS doesn't work on all websites.

atm i'm making an AJAX website, which works perfectly fine without JS enabled aswell.
it works either way. you only won't have fancy effects without javascript.

**Sean** · 04-11-2007, 01:41 AM

U mean JS doesnt work on all Browsers

A Survery i read somewhere, reckons that 15-20% of users still disable Javascript in their browser settings ...

**Fragalot** · 04-11-2007, 02:17 AM

**wasahobo** · 04-11-2007, 12:10 PM

Personally I like using...

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

As Sean stated it seems to work very well when creating a 100% CSS site. I find I only use strict when I need to implament XML into a page.

**Fragalot** · 04-11-2007, 09:40 PM

agreed.