Re: about a bug

On 15 Sep 2009, at 17:26, Antonio Alessi wrote:

>
> Dear W3C,
>
> this is just to inform You about a recurrent problem that I have met.
> I'm trying to validate some sites of myne, but to me it is not  
> convenient to put
> the
> <HTML>
>
> after the
> <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN" "http://5tibetanrites.astrotime.org 
> ">

It might not be convenient, but the structure of an HTML document is  
"The Doctype" followed by "The root element" (HTML). (There are other  
things that can go there, such as comments, but this shouldn't be  
needed).

Also, your system identifier ( "http://5tibetanrites.astrotime.org" )  
does not match the standard system identifier for the public  
identifier ( "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN") you are using. Not  
only that, but the system identifier doesn't even point to a DTD.

See: http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html

> line, since in that case the Firefox (3.0.4.) that I use for tests  
> behaves differently from the normal mode inside the page's layout,  
> in various, unusual and unpredictable cases.

You have this backwards. The Doctype is used to switch between Quirks  
and Standards modes in browsers. Your current failure to place the  
Doctype as the first thing in the file is triggering Quirks mode,  
which causes browsers to use various non-standard methods for error  
recovery and CSS and DOM interpretation.

Quirks mode is much more inconsistent between browsers that Standards  
mode.
> This could appear very strange, but I have checked these problems  
> more than one time.
>
> A unexpected effect, that I mentioned to altervista.org too, was the  
> impossibility to show by a click one hidden area into the bottom of  
> the HTML page (through a showhide script).
>

This sounds like the script is depending on the non-standard error  
recovery features and is thus broken.

-- 
David Dorward
http://dorward.me.uk

Received on Wednesday, 16 September 2009 09:06:11 UTC