Re: em

At 1:50 PM -0700 6/20/00, Matthew Brealey wrote:

>In other words, for 99% of the pages on the web, and for *all*
>commercial pages (commercial sites are *not* written in strict HTML),
>the quirks mode is triggered.

Not so: in MacIE5, "unknown" HTML doctypes and all flavors of XHTML 
(including transitional) work in "strict" mode. I concede that only a 
very small minority of commercial pages fit this profile today, but 
every one produced at my most definitely commercial design firm over 
the last few years has been valid against a custom DTD (at least 
initially), whose DOCTYPEs put MacIE5 into strict mode. 
<http://www.motorola.com/>, for example (no comments on general 
design issues with this site, please).

>But then anyone using a new DTD, such as that of the new ISO/IEC
>standard, which is just about the strictest DTD around, will find their
>ultra-strict page will be rendered in quirks mode because the browser
>was released before the dtd.

Again: not so in MacIE5. I don't know the latest turn of the wind 
about Mozilla's policy here, but I and several others have argued 
strenuously in the past that all unknown HTML document types must 
trigger strict mode, as in MacIE5. In other words, strict should be 
the default in Mozilla. If what you assert is true, please speak up 
in the appropriate Mozilla forums.

>  > In  "strict" mode, IE5/Mac does as it should:
>
>In other words, 99% of the time it does not.

Granted, but I don't think it is unreasonable for a UA developer to 
demand that one's HTML be kosher in order to expect kosher CSS 
support. The authors of the 99% pages at least have a clear way out: 
the choice is theirs. Now, I agree that DOCTYPE-sniffing is very far 
from an ideal solution, but I suspect that ideal solutions for 
HTML+CSS will remain forever ideal given the damage already done by 
most currently shipping implementations.

--
Todd Fahrner
Web UI Technologist
Metrius

Received on Tuesday, 20 June 2000 14:22:56 UTC