Hi Tina, I would suggest using HTML 4.01 Transitional over HTML 4.0 but I can't remember why now. I think (maybe) it is more consistently displayed across browsers. I know we had a reason to make sure we changed all our stuff years ago but it was probably to do with NN 4 at that stage.
There is no requirement to change to XHTML and some of us argue that it's too early to go there yet anyway as the major browser doesn't support it when done absolutely correctly. Using XHTML 1.0 Transitional does work though, but there is no real benefit over HTML 4.01 for most websites as XHTML 1.0 Transitional is pretty well HTML 5 with a few extra requirements and it will tolerate faults pretty well. Depending on how complex your site is and what you use to edit content, you may have some issues (e.g. running a verity search engine across XHTML can be problematic and inline HTML editors in Content Management Systems can cause you headaches). Once you get into XHTML 1.1 (served correctly) things will break if not well formed and valid. The difference here is that should no longer be served up as text/html and this is where the fun starts with the major browser (IE). Anyway you asked about doctypes. Here is some reading for you, a list of doctypes and a good article on the subject: http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html http://www.alistapart.com/articles/doctype/ P > I learned HTML with HTML 4.0 and I am now moving over to > XHTML as it seems > that all future coding will be XHTML. I know that XHTML is > stricter in its > formation, but I am curious to know what I should put in the > DOCTYPE area > of my pages if I am using XHTML. Is it HTML 4.0 Transitional > or XHTML > Transitional or XHTML strict? > > ----------------- > Tina ***************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/ See http://webstandardsgroup.org/mail/guidelines.cfm for some hints on posting to the list & getting help *****************************************************
