Re: Allow other doctypes

Ben Boyle wrote:
> I intend to do some testing with HTML5 backwards compatibility soon 
> (so I guess I'll be flagging documents with "<!DOCTYPE HTML>")

Changing from HTML4/XHTML1 Strict DOCTYPEs (or any other DOCTYPE that 
triggers standards mode) to the HTML5 DOCTYPE will not affect document 
parsing and rendering at all in current browsers.

> I'd encourage all authors to do this ... start using HTML5 today where 
> you can! That'll show us where the issues (for authors) are.

Actually, I'd encourage most authors to continue using HTML4 DOCTYPEs at 
this stage until more browsers, particularly IE, actually have 
reasonable support for HTML5.

The reason is because Microsoft intend to introduce bug mode switching 
based on the DOCTYPE, and the more sites that use the HTML5 DOCTYPE 
unfortunately increases the chance of IE requiring an additional 
standards-mode opt-in (even with the HTML5 DOCTYPE) in the future, which 
would be bad for everyone.  So the sad reality is that we need to give 
MS as much time as possible to fix their major bugs before everyone 
starts using HTML5.

See the discussions about versioning and bug mode switches from a few 
months ago.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt
http://lachy.id.au/

Received on Sunday, 17 June 2007 04:04:19 UTC