Welcome to the website of Davis Fiore

HTML - What are strict and transitional HTML?

Mon, 04/29/2013 - 22:11 |

admin

HTML like any other language evolve. In an attempt to maintain compatibility with deprecated tags, both HTML 4.0 and XHTML 1.0, provide a transitional doctype. A strict doctype, on the other hand, doesn't allow any deprecated tag.

XHTML 1.1 doesn't make any distinction. Also HTML 5 doesn't make distinction, because none of the deprecated tags are still supported.

There is a third flavor named frameset, a variation of the transitional, that allows frames.

Strict, transitional and frameset are specified by a doctype and this is defined standard mode. When the doctype is not present, the browser enter in quirck mode. This means the browser maintains compatibility with pages designed for old and buggy browsers, instead of strictly adhering to W3C standards.

Here's an example of DTD for strict HTML 4.01:

	<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" 
		"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

Here's an example for transitional HTML 4.01:

	<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" 
		"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">

Here's an example for frameset HTML 4.01:

	<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Frameset//EN"
		"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/frameset.dtd">

Here's an example for HTML 5:

	<!DOCTYPE HTML>

Here's an example for strict XHTML 1.0:

	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
	<!DOCTYPE html
		PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
		"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
	<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

Here's an example for transitional XHTML 1.0:

	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
	<!DOCTYPE html
		PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
		"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
	<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

Here's an example for frameset XHTML 1.0:

	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
	<!DOCTYPE html
		PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Frameset//EN"
		"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-frameset.dtd">
	<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">

Here's an example for XHTML 1.1:

	<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC
		"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN"
		"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">