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Dreamweaver MX - Advanced Training Course

Dreamweaver MX, HTML 4.0 and Doctype switching

Whenever you create a new document using either HTML 4.0 or XHTML Dreamweaver MX automatically inserts a DTD. The DTD (Document Type Definition) informs the browser or user agent of the entire legal markup and specifies where and how the mark up can be included in a given document.

Currently there are three modes that are available to web browsers these are:

In Dreamweaver MX, when you create an HTML 4.01 document the application creates an incomplete DTD which throws the browser into Quirks mode. For example in Quirks mode the web browser / user agent does not inherit CSS styles into tables. Here is what the DTD that Dreamweaver MX for HTML 4.01 documents looks like:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

In order to ensure that the browser / user agent switches to Standards mode you should replace this with the following DTD

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

You can learn more about Doctype switching by visting any of the links listed in the resource section » of this mini site MF

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