[thelist] IE6

[Peter-Paul Koch]

>>>Now let's all use the <!DOCTYPE..> in our pages to trigger
>>>W3C-compliancy.
>>
>>I'm afraid it won't be so simple. IE6 and NN6 have their own, separate
>>implementation of DOCTYPEs and their own bugs. I'm afraid we're forced to 
>>do
>>
>>if (ns)
>>  document.write('<!DOCTYPE etc>');
>>else if (ie)
>>  document.write('<!DOCTYPE etc>');
>>
>>Mark my words, doctypes are going to cause a godawful lot of cross-browser 
>>trouble.
>>
>>ppk
>
>So PPK, as a newcomer to including doctypes in pages I'm curious to know 
>what trouble they might cause and what problems they may already pose.

At the moment Netscape 6, Explorer 6 and Explorer 5 on Mac each have their 
own ideas about DOCTYPEs. Of course the general purpose of doctypes would be 
to give information about the way the HTML document ought to be marked up, 
but I've seen time and again that certain doctypes in certain browsers lead 
to certain bugs.

For instance, my Scrolling Layer script 
(http://www.xs4all.nl/~ppk/js/index.html?layerscroll.html) does not work in 
IE5Mac when you use a certain doctype (for details see the page).

See 
http://evolt.org/article/Does_Netscape_6_Break_Your_Table_Layouts/17/4427/ 
for James Aylard's take on HTML 4.01 doctypes in NN6: they're problematical.

The reason is in all cases that browser vendors want to add doctypes (in 
itself a good idea) but have badly underestimated the sheer bugginess that 
goes with forcing a browser to interpret HTML in a different way from the 
normal way.

Secondly, each browser vendor has his own ideas about how a doctype should 
influence the markup of the page.

In short, I'm not going to use any doctypes for the forseeable future and I 
advise other people to leave them for the moment.

ppk

_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp