It’s time to kill off Transitional DOCTYPEs
No, really, it is. What the Transitional DOCTYPE was for was for allowing you to include presentational elements within your markup that tied back to versions of HTML prior to version 4.01. And frankly, anyone who is using a DOCTYPE is likely to be in favour of clean, semantic code, which means separating your content from your presentation — using the HTML for your content layer and css for your presentational layer (and possibly javascript for your behavioural layer, if you have one).
Besides which, the HTML 4.01 Transitional DOCTYPE tells you not to use itself. Ah, what the hell. If you want to read more about it, read my Accessites article It’s Time To Kill Off Transitional Doctypes
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Steve Pugh says:
September 15th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Whilst marking up some documents for the Home Office I cam across an area where a deprecated construction is arguably still the best tool for the job.
The value and start attribites used for list numbering are supposed to be replaced by generated content and counters in CSS. But as IE6 doesn’t support that part of CSS, and support in other browsers is patchy, we’re out of luck.
The counter argument is that if the numbering is important (as it is in legal and government docs) then it should be in the content not the markup (and certainly not in the presentation layer).
Mike Cherim says:
September 16th, 2006 at 3:15 am
You know Steve, you make a valid point there. I remember wanting to create a top-ten count-down list, “Tonight Show” style. starting with ten and working my way down to the number one reason and I used the value attribute applied to an ordered list. It worked just peachy but was invalid so I didn’t go with it.
Even though that would have been the best way to do it, I was doing this at Accessites for one of the articles and ended up using an unordered list with text numerals (second best) because the site has a strict DTD I and couldn’t very well have a validation error on a page… people would talk
I fully agree with Jack and support the article, but your point is also quite undeniable and very well taken.
michael herndon says:
September 18th, 2006 at 7:17 pm
There are tons of web designers and developers who would love to use the strict doctype, however IE6 does not play nice with the application/xhtml+xml mime type, which is a must if you are to use xhtml strict. Transitional allows the html/text mime type. So till IE 6 goes buh bye, we are still stuck with the xhtml transitional, unless we want to rollback to the html 4.1 strict doctype. (To which I, for one, do not intend to do)
Willma says:
September 19th, 2006 at 12:37 am
I agree 100% with michael herndon, the article seems to have been mostly talking about html 4.1, but it did make it seem all transitional doc types are bad, until IE6 is no longer I will be using xhtml transitional, I used to use xhtml strict untill i realised it was actually the worng thing to do. I do not want to go back to html 4.1.
JackP says:
September 19th, 2006 at 8:00 am
@Michael why is applications xhtml+xml a must? Plenty of designers, including myself use strict with text/html mime type. It’s perfectly valid – check the W3C validator.
@Wilma, I might have been talking about HTML 4.01 but that’s because XHTML 1.0 is a reformulation of it. I think about, and use XHTML 1.0 strict as standard.
Steve Pugh says:
September 19th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Perhaps people are confusing XHTML 1.0 Strict with XHTML 1.1 which should not be served as text/html ?
There is no difference about which content-type should be used for Strict and Transitional. So long as you meet the Appendix C criteria (which is another can of worms in itself) any XHTML 1.0 may be served as text/html.
W3C XHTML Media Types Summary
obITLAPD: Arrrrrrrrr!
Dino Baskovic says:
September 19th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
HTML emails. ‘Nuff said.
Jason says:
September 19th, 2006 at 7:58 pm
I’ll admit that it’s been awhile since I’ve even tried XHTML strict, but I recall that when I did, it created presentation issues with IE 6 that were resolved by going to XHTML transitional.
Perhaps it’s my own shortcomings and lack of knowledge in how to work within the boundaries of IE 6′s support for XHTML strict, but if I can keep my code valid and all I have to do to get it to look right is give it the transitional DTD, that’s what I’m going to do.
Perhaps you should focus on killing of the HTML 4.x and prior DTDs first, since XHTML transitional is already much more strict, and by the time any progress is made there maybe all of the commonly used browsers will be able to properly cope with the strict DTD.
JackP says:
September 19th, 2006 at 8:57 pm
Jason,
the point is that the HTML 4.01 Strict
DOCTYPEis more strict than the XHTML 1.0 TransitionalDOCTYPE. That’s the problem.As I state in the article, the The transitional doctypes were meant to be a temporary measure in HTML 4.01 so surely they should go first — particularly as they offer so little.
Robert Wellock says:
September 22nd, 2006 at 12:28 pm
It depends upon how you use the Transitional Doctype and which elements and attributes you chose to apply amongst other things. Plus there are huge differences between XHTML Transitional and HTML 4.01 Transitional.
Though really it more a case of trying not to use deprecated values if at all possible for a real-world situation, which I’d agree with.
456 Berea Street says:
September 26th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
No more Transitional DOCTYPEs, please
The phasing out of Transitional DOCTYPEs is long overdue – they are called Transitional for a reason.
Nate K says:
September 26th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more in this post. I personally think that there is no reason to use a trans doctype. Now, I know if you are using legacy software or something that is out of your control that this might be hard to do – but it encourages the developer to step up to the plate to bring their website up to standards.
However, just as with web standards in general, it can take someone more time to really catch on or understand what a DTD is and how/where to use it (and its definitions).
Edward Clarke says:
September 27th, 2006 at 9:39 am
Killing off the transitional doctype is a step too far. It is a transition but too many websites need to validate first, let alone grapple with a strict doctype. I’d rather recommend raising the bottom line than improving the top.
Kendall says:
September 27th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
Indeed people need to move away from transitional when it is no longer needed. I feel the bigger problem is that there are more and more web sites being put out by non-web designers who don’t understand what they are doing. I partly feel only web designers should be allowed to create sites. Perhaps people should have to get a license in order to publish sites, like a driver’s a test. Yeah, that’ll never happen, but would be helpful. IE is also a big problem because it babies ill-written pages. If browsers stopped supporting bad pages it would force the creators to make decent pages. I know this’ll never happen, but one can dream.
Nice article.
Strict Doctype says:
September 27th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
[...]The elitists are doing the rounds again by advocating that the goal posts shift on what is required to produce a web site. The message this time is[...]
JackP says:
September 27th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
Nice response, Ed (aka “Mr. Strict Doctype” — worth a read — go and look).
I would agree with you – and disagree with Kendall — I wholeheartedly support the notion that the web is for everyone, not just professionals – but that the professionals should be setting a good example!
Indeed, I welcome the fact that everyone and their granny — and their granny’s dog — can blog. My original article on accessites explains why we on accessites insist on a strict doctype for the sites we grade.
What inspired the post though was my exasperation at people continuing to use a transitional doctype even though there post would have validated as strict. It’s as if people were scared of the strict doctype, when it’s not actually that hard to achieve.
Kendall says:
September 27th, 2006 at 11:51 pm
Well just to clarify (since I didn’t state my thoughts across all that well in my previous post) it’s not that I don’t think everyone has a place to contriibute to the web, but just that not just anyone should be putting up “entire sites” without knowing what they’re doing. Blogging, social sites, and the like are a great place for just about everyone. Though take a few minutes to browse a site like myspace and you’ll see why not everyone should be designing web sites. Hopefully that clears up my statements from before at least a little. And if you didn’t realize my license to design comment was simply me making a joke then you might want to learn to take life a little easier.
I also agree with Ed in his linked article about a cause of the problem partly being the tools that are being used to create web pages. It would be nice though if these tools and browsers could keep up with the web standards (not that I blame them, I know they’re trying).
Also, though no one specifically said I was an elitist I wouldn’t consider myself one. I just do web design as a fun hobby and happen to have my sites validate according to XHTML Strict. If that’s all it takes to be considered elitist then perhaps a new definition should be used.
JackP says:
September 28th, 2006 at 2:17 am
I don’t think anyone took “licence to design” seriously Kendall, so I’d not worry about that one. I still disagree although don’t worry I’m not going to suddenly start generating a Godwin.
So then, to summarise:
1) Pages with a DOCTYPE are better than those without
2) Valid pages are better than invalid ones
3) Valid STRICT pages are preferable to valid TRANSITIONAL ones.
4) When people agree on 90% of a subject they’ll always find the remaining 10% grounds for argument.
Damien says:
October 3rd, 2006 at 12:39 pm
Good article. I use XHTML Strict for one simple reason – its more reliable. Having documents render in standards mode in all browsers provides a more consistent result and doea away with a lot of the CSS headaches you can come across when using transitional doctypes or worse, no doctype and thus triggering quirks mode.
DaProfessor says:
August 18th, 2007 at 1:31 am
Why not change? Perhaps because for all the good things, there seems to be many bad ones. Phantom spacing for images by themselves in cells. CSS needed to apply something as simple as an underline (why do we feel the need to move away from [b] for bold, [u] for underline, etc.). All these things can be fixed, of course, but why change it when it was so simple before. The arguments I hear about it talk about 1.) say that it was “supposed” to be transitional (who cares, as long as it works we can stick with it), and the whole seperating format from content. I don’t know about you guys and gals, but I don’t have a lot of people coming along and saying, hey, let’s do this or that change with stylesheets. They usually want the whole thing redone if they’re going in that direction. And if not, I’ll bite the bullet and do a 2 second find and replace (in the included PHP files which typically replicate throughout the site anyways). I’m not buying it. Perhaps for huge corporate sites, but for small business sites, transistional’s just the easiest way to go.
garment sales worldwide says:
July 28th, 2011 at 6:40 pm
Read was interesting, stay in touch……
[...]please visit the sites we follow, including this one, as it represents our picks from the web[...]……
1234test.com says:
August 30th, 2011 at 10:48 pm
Test1234…
[...]We all know that skills come pretty handy when doing something new and even more it if is important to us.[...]…
san diego houses for rent says:
September 11th, 2011 at 8:19 am
How To Find A Good Rent…
[...]When you have knowledge, skills and experience these are are crucial to make you happy at everything that you do.[...]…
visit x net says:
September 22nd, 2011 at 1:05 am
Top Visit x Camgirls auf Deutschland !!!
Symptoms Of Low Vitamin D says:
September 22nd, 2011 at 8:34 pm
Symptoms Of Low Vitamin D…
just beneath, are numerous totally not related sites to ours, however, they are surely worth going over…
canvas pictures from photos says:
October 3rd, 2011 at 4:25 pm
Article on The All Topics…
[...]When you know when doing your work you will do more than when you have no ideas…[...]…
Kartenquiz says:
October 4th, 2011 at 9:02 pm
How ToLive Happily Blog…
[...]When you have knowledge, skills and experience these are are crucial to make you happy at everything that you do.[...]…
Christian says:
October 5th, 2011 at 5:46 am
I needed info with this on Msn and came across your content. I found it to be nice and very clear. Cheers
cruises from baltimore says:
October 23rd, 2011 at 3:22 pm
With havin so much content do you ever run into any issues of plagorism or copyright violation? My website has a lot of unique content I’ve either created myself or outsourced but it looks like a lot of it is popping it up all over the internet without my permission. Do you know any solutions to help reduce content from being ripped off? I’d definitely appreciate it.
dining solutions direct says:
November 8th, 2011 at 11:21 pm
How To Find Good Dining Solutions…
[...]To have the right knowledge you can achieve at many more jobs and making no bad decisions..[...]…
reverse phone number says:
November 19th, 2011 at 8:06 am
reverse phone number Hello there, just became aware of your blog through Google, and found that it’s really informative. I’m gonna watch out for brussels. I will be grateful if you continue this in future. A lot of people will be benefited from you…
Hello there, just became aware of your blog through Google, and found that it’s really informative. I’m gonna watch out for brussels. I will be grateful if you continue this in future. A lot of people will be benefited from your writing. Cheers!…
Sunset Cove Phangan says:
December 12th, 2011 at 10:41 pm
How To Find Sunset Cove…
[...]Writing about a subject like this is pretty difficult. You can find out much more about this topic[...]…
Colombia Introduction Agency says:
December 18th, 2011 at 8:25 pm
How To Find Good Places to Meet Ladies…
[...]Writing about a subject like that is really demanding. It really is good to know some individuals nevertheless care about this[...]…
http://gheadshot.net says:
December 28th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
How To Find Useful Information On Blogs…
[...]This is really cool. Keep up with the great writing.[...]…
Atlanta Roofing says:
January 11th, 2012 at 12:49 am
Do You Want To Get A New Roof…
[...]Awesome information that I’ve been searching for for some time! I got some interesting strategies from this[...]…
women fragrance says:
February 4th, 2012 at 2:51 am
Perfumes For Women…
[...]We all know that skills come pretty handy when doing something new and even more it if is important to us.[...]…
Tour Packages in India says:
February 8th, 2012 at 12:14 am
India Tour Packages…
[...]Writing about a subject like this can be really challenging. I’ll examine your site within the long term.[...]…
talent agency says:
March 30th, 2012 at 10:33 pm
Real Paranormal Investigation…
[...]It’s great that individuals even now know quite a bit about point like that. It’s superior to understand a lot of people nevertheless care about this[...]…
Spring 2012 Fashion says:
April 11th, 2012 at 10:08 pm
Spring And Shoes Go Together…
[...]Awesome information that I’ve been in search of for some time! You can find out more about this topic[...]…
Graco Nautilus 3-in-1 car seat says:
April 21st, 2012 at 7:24 pm
Other Sites……
[...]It lets you perform part-time. It provides you the chance to construct a beneficiant residual revenue. And it[...]……