[thelist] DOCTYPE? What DOCTYPE?

[Graham Bird]

Hi,

Does everyone use the DOCTYPE declaration at the top of their HTML docs?

The reason I ask is that CSS seems to be rendered far more strictly if you
include the DOCTYPE. Trying to get relative font sizes to work in table
based layouts is almost impossible since if you use percentage based sizes
with a DOCTYPE, they scale themselves down with each nested 'td'. If you
miss off the DOCTYPE they happily stay the same size.

This is happening in Netscape 6, IE5 (Mac) and IE 6, and possibly others.
IE4 and 5 (PC) seem to ignore it either way.

So, I know it is Mr. W3C's recommendation to have DOCTYPEs, and I'm not one
to argue, but it seems that I have four choices if I want my font sizes how
I want them:

1. Use pixel sizes (naughty - users can't increase or decrease their fonts)
(with most browsers)
2. Leave off the DOCTYPE (naughty naughty - Mr. W3C will get me)
3. 'Class' every td separately (way too complex)
4. Don't use tables (not an option - need to support NN3)

What to do?

Graham Bird