[thelist] Valid form for meta tags?

Thu Jul 31 02:23:44 CDT 2003

> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
>
> I am using the HTML 4.01 transitional doctype. When I run a page
> through the W3C HTML validator it gives the error message "character
> data is not allowed here", while seeming to indicate the
> forward slash
> closing my meta tags. I don't get this error with tags like
>
> <br />
>
> so I am confused.

The validator has limitations and that may be why it's not picking up on
the <br /> but with html 4.01 you don't need the />  so that's probably
why it's choking.

if you are using  /> to close tags then you're using xhtml standards why
not use:

<!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" lang="en">

instead?

more on doctypes:

http://www.alistapart.com/stories/doctype/

HTH

Tony