Re: Beta: Fatal Error: No DOCTYPE specified!

On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, Kim Brooks Wei wrote:
[..]
> My own case is different from many others who do not have a strong
> tech background. For one thing, I am a small business developer by
> trade. I was able to spot the importance to the small business
> community of developing technical awareness several years ago and
> have made this type of R & D my principle and foremost concern as a
> business services professional. I'm willing to struggle through natty
> technical issues until I am able to resolve them because the "bridge"
> service which I provide to connect my clients with the resources of
> the tech world is an increasingly important component of the work I
> do, as well as being a very essential service and one which not very
> many individuals are able to provide.

So, you exist to exploit, explain and leverage the information gap
between the knowledgeable/aware few and the unaware but needful
many, and admit it's an opportunity for you...

[..]
> I believe that w3c is overestimating the technical ability of its
> community of potential users and is also unaware of how little
> understood web standards are by individuals not directly associated
> with their evolution.

...and yet you object to the w3c's work providing a similar
imformation gap and opportunity for people like you to explain,
exploit, and bridge?

Oh, the hypocrisy!

(You might want to check out e.g. www.webstandards.org, which exists
 within this gap. Unless your organisation is paying membership fees to
 the w3c, you're unlikely to be directly associated with the standards
 evolution.)

L.

the below is an implementation issue entirely separately from
validation.

> By the way, a friendly UI, if implemented in the validator system,
> should also include a listing of known bugs and their fixes, e.g. in
> a similar manner as that laid out in the following article by Eric
> Meyer published a few days ago:
>
> WHEN NETSCAPE 6 INCORRECTLY CENTERS NESTED TABLES: FIX IT LIKE THIS:
> http://www.evolt.org/article/Does_IE_6_Center_Your_Table_Content/17/15341/
>
> " . . . the key to eliminating this problem is simple: turn off the
> standards-compliant rendering mode.
>
> "How, you ask? The secret is in the document type declaration
> (sometimes referred to as a doctype declaration, but not to be
> confused with the document type definition, or DTD). And here's how
> you do it:
>
> ". . . (with the elimination of) the URI portion of the doctype
> declaration -- IE 6 reverts to what is commonly called "quirks" mode,
> and renders the table in a manner consistent with previous versions
> of IE:
>
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">    "
>
>
>
> Kim
> --
> Kim Brooks Wei
> P O Box 626
> Fair Lawn
> NJ  07410
> V 201.475.1854
> mailto:kimi@kimbwei.com

<http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/><L.Wood@ee.surrey.ac.uk>

Received on Friday, 1 November 2002 14:00:36 UTC