|
ABC ~ All
'Bout Computers |
|
||||||
|
Kathleen's Spider Web DOCTYPE Discussion Before
we get started, I have to give you an update on Bobby (ABC,
Vol. 4). Unfortunately, the downloadable version of Bobby is no longer
free. CAST, the organization that developed Bobby, is now charging $99 for
a single-user copy (they also have site licenses available). You can read more
about this at their
site. In this article we are going to discuss the DOCTYPE declaration, also known as a Document Type Declaration. In Internet Explorer, do a View | Source on a web page and you should see, at the very top of the page, a statement that looks something like this: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> HTML
standards require that you include this statement in all your HTML documents.
Why? One reason is that it tells a validator which HTML specification to use
when validating your page (see Resources at the end of this article for the best
known validators). The other reason is that, new versions of browsers are
finally starting to use the DTD to determine how to render your pages. These
browsers include IE 5 for the Mac, Netscape 6, and Mozilla. Internet Explorer
for the Mac features a new rendering engine, "Tasman", provides full
support for the published Internet content standards as defined by the World
Wide Web Consortium (W3C)! Netscape 6 (currently at version 6.2) appears to be
much less quirky than Netscape 4.7. And then there’s my personal favorite –
Opera – IMHO, the most standards compliant browser on the market today. Why use the Transitional declaration, instead of Strict? HTML 4 Transitional includes all elements and attributes of HTML 4 Strict but adds presentational attributes, deprecated elements, and link targets. HTML 4 Transitional recognizes the relatively poor browser support for style sheets, allowing many HTML presentation features to be used as a transition towards HTML 4 Strict. If you are using Frames, this is the DOCTYPE for frames pages: <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd"> If
you’re using FrontPage, you’ve probably noticed that FrontPage, by default,
doesn’t code a DOCTYPE in your pages. Here’s how you can get around
this: In
Microsoft FrontPage, there is a file on your computer that is used as the
'template' for the new_page_1.htm that's created either when you open your web
or when you hit the "New Page" button. The file is called "Normal.htm". In a normal install of FrontPage 2000 and 2002, this file is in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Templates\1033\Pages\ normal.tem\ You
can open this file in FrontPage and edit it like you would any other web page.
Navigate to the directory where the file is located, open the file and choose
File | Properties. You can add things that you want to be common to all
the new web pages you create from this point on in all your webs, like your Meta
tags for Author, Copyright, Rating, etc., and DOCTYPE. Here's a DOCTYPE statement that you can copy and paste into the template, it goes before the <html> tag (in HTML View). The DOCTYPE statement must be at the very beginning of your HTML. To see what I mean, do a View | Source on this page. <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> When you've added it, do a File | Save As Normal.htm (Yes, you want to overwrite the file). From that point on, every new page you create will have a valid DOCTYPE declaration. Known exceptions:
For
pages you’ve already created, you can use ErrOmi to find the pages that need
one added. If you are using FrontPage 2000, ErrOmi will warn you about missing
DOCTYPES. If you’re using FrontPage 2002, ErrOmi will actually add the missing
DOCTYPE for you! Resources (all free): Web Design Group (WDG) HTML Validator Kathleen Anderson is a webmaster at the State of Connecticut and chairs their committee on web site accessibility for persons with disabilities. She also has her own web design company, Spider Web Woman Designs. |
,
