Does using an HTML 5 Doctype cause Quirks mode in modern browsers, since HTML5 isn't out yet?
(That is Modern Browsers were out before HMTL5 started spreading, so they don't properly support it.)
If yes, does this mean that the HTML 5 Doctype is tentatively like none at all?
EDIT: If not, what does it do in browsers that don't support and the like?
No it doesn't, see this article.
What's nice about this new DOCTYPE, especially, is that all current browsers (IE, FF, Opera, Safari) will look at it and switch the content into standards mode - even though they don't implement HTML5. This means that you could start writing your web pages using HTML5 today and have them last for a very, very, long time.
According to Wikipedia table (that I love) HTML 5 DOCTYPE triggers full standard mode for:
FF, Chrome, Opera 7.5+, Safari, Konqeror 3.5+ and also IE8!!!
and triggers Almost standard mode [*] for:
IE6 and IE7
So it's definitely the best DOCTYPE ever created!
"One DOCTYPE to bring them all and in the darkness bind them..." [Lords of the rings]
[*] "Almost standards" does NOT make such a big difference to full standard mode, in the same Wikipedia link above you can find more details.
No it does not.
Related
I've created a form that is dynamically created with JavaScript and is added in another website using the <script> tag.
The doctype used by this other website is <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> which uses the quirks mode.
I've built my form by taking this in consideration and everything is working as expected in Chrome, Firefox and IE 10. However, when I test it in IE 9 and earlier, the form is not displayed at all. When I open the developper tools, I can see that IE 10 uses the new quirks mode but IE 9 and earlier uses the IE5 Quirks mode.
I was wondering if the new quirks mode can be used to display this page when using IE 9 and earlier. If this is not possible, I would like to force standard mode but only when using IE 9 or earlier and keep using quirks for every other browser.
I can't use the html5 doctype since their website is built with quirks mode instead of standards and their design is all broken when I use this doctype.
You cannot change the mode once the page is loaded. And you cannot change it programmatically. The only way to force a page into quirks mode is to load it without a valid doctype or with serious bugs in the HTML.
If you have a doctype, but your page is still loading in quirks mode, then it means that you have serious bugs in your HTML. This will give you bigger problems than just being in quirks mode. You should definitely fix those bugs. If you really want to be in quirks mode, drop the doctype, but you should really try not to have HTML code that is so bad it triggers quirks mode even with a doctype!
You can validate your HTML to find those bugs by using the W3C validator.
In terms of switching your page at runtime between IE10's two different quirks modes, the simple answer is that you can't do that.
Sorry about that.
However, to be honest, it's probably for the best. Using quirks mode is be a complete disaster anyway. It doesn't just change the layout mode; it also switches off most of the browser's features (ie pretty much everything invented since 1998).
But now for the good news:
Luckily, switching away from Quirks mode is a lot easier than you think.
The main layout issue (the different box model) can be fixed by adding the following to the top of your CSS:
*{box-sizing:border-box;}
This is the standards-compliant way to set the box model to the quirks-mode style layout. Most of the broken layout problems cause by switching from quirks mode to standards mode can be resolved with this simple CSS style.
There are other quirks, but they're relatively minor and shouldn't be too hard to deal with once you've fixed the main issue. A lot of them are actually not quirks mode issues, but bugs in older IE versions that the original coder may have had to hack his way around. There's no guarantee that these will continue working the same in future versions anyway, even if you do stick to quirks mode, so you would be best off fixing them now anyway.
So, to summarise:
Fix your page so it loads in standards mode. Valid doctype and valid HTML.
Use box-sizing to mitigate the main layout gremlins caused by the switch.
Fix the remaining layout issues manually.
It's really a lot less work than it sounds. Honest.
So, for example, if my HTML document does not declare the HTML5 doctype, but I use something in the HTML5 spec, will that still work? Does that cause problems for some browsers? Will the document still validate?
It depends on the target browsers. Webkit-browsers, Firefox and Opera will handle HTML5 elements quite normally even if your doctype is not HTML5.
IE9 on the other hand (I bet you saw this coming), may behave entirely differently on another type of doctype. If IE9 is not in IE9 Standards mode (it could be in quirks, IE8 compat, whatever), it will not support the HTML5 features it does in IE9 standards.
So essentially your main concern is that you need to make sure all browsers go into strict standards mode. The easiest way to achieve this is to use the HTML5 doctype, since it will trigger standards mode in all browsers - including older browsers that don't actually support HTML5.
Yes, you can, however, it will not validate and possibly look weird in some or all browsers. You shouldn't do it. If you are using HTML5, declare a proper doctype: <!doctype html>.
In the HTML5 specs, it says that the doctype is not mandatory, however, no browser wide browser implementation of that rule yet exists. In theory, you should be able to do it without any problems.
You can, but the behavior will be undefined. This means that your results may be [even more] inconsistent across browsers, and that it may fail in some circumstances for unknown reasons.
It definitely won't validate, and it is certainly not something you should do.
I know that different doctypes are essentially about how compliant the html is, but what difference does it make what doctype you specify? Do browsers handle the same code differently depending on the doctype?
Thanks
UPDATE - most answers mention quirks mode can be set off if no doctype is specified. But what would be the different between xhtml and html 4.01?
The biggest thing is having a doctype or not. If you don't, the browser will work in a "quirks" mode rather than standards mode and many things will be slightly different. If you have one — any — that typically activates more standards-compliant behavior in the browser.
See this article for the details of what doctypes do on various different browsers and what modes — quirks, standards, almost-standards, etc. — different browsers have. Quoting a relevant section:
Modes for text/html Content
The choice
of the mode for text/html content
depends on doctype sniffing (discussed
later in this document). In IE8 and
IE9, the mode also depends on other
factors. However, by default even in
IE8 and IE9, the mode depends on the
doctype for non-intranet sites that
are not on a blacklist supplied by
Microsoft.
It cannot be stressed
enough that the exact behavior of the
modes varies from browser to browser
even though discussion in this
document has been unified.
Quirks Mode
In the Quirks mode the
browsers violate contemporary Web
format specifications in order to
avoid “breaking” pages authored
according to practices that were
prevalent in the late 1990s. Different
browsers implement different quirks.
In Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8 and 9,
the Quirks mode is effectively frozen
IE 5.5. In other browsers, the Quirks
mode is a handful of deviations from
the Almost Standards mode.
If you are authoring new pages now,
you are supposed to comply with the
relevant specifications (CSS 2.1 in
particular) and use the Standards
mode.
Standards Mode
In the Standards mode
the browsers try to give conforming
documents the specification-wise
correct treatment to the extent
implemented in a particular browser.
Since different browsers are at
different stages of compliance, the
Standards mode isn’t a single target,
either.
HTML 5 calls this mode the “no quirks
mode”.
Almost Standards Mode
Firefox, Safari,
Chrome, Opera (since 7.5), IE8 and IE9
also have a mode known as “the Almost
Standards mode”, which implements the
vertical sizing of table cells
traditionally and not rigorously
according to the CSS2 specification.
Mac IE 5, Windows IE 6 and 7, Opera
prior to 7.5 and Konqueror do not need
an Almost Standards mode, because they
don’t implement the vertical sizing of
table cells rigorously according to
the CSS2 specification in their
respective Standards modes anyway. In
fact, their Standards modes are closer
to the Almost Standards mode than to
the Standards mode of newer browsers.
HTML 5 calls this mode the “limited
quirks mode”.
IE7 Mode
IE8 and IE9 have a mode that
is mostly a frozen copy of the mode
that was the Standards mode in IE7.
Other browsers do not have a mode like
this, and this mode is not specified
by HTML5.
IE8 Standards Mode
IE9 has a mode that
is mostly a frozen copy of the mode
that was the Standards mode in IE8.
Other browsers do not have a mode like
this, and this mode is not specified
by HTML5.
IE8 Almost Standards Mode
IE9 has a
mode that is mostly a frozen copy of
the mode that was the Almost Standards
mode in IE8. Other browsers do not
have a mode like this, and this mode
is not specified by HTML5.
...but see the article for a full discussion.
From Wikipedia:
A Document Type Declaration, or
DOCTYPE, is an instruction that
associates a particular SGML or XML
document (for example, a webpage) with
a Document Type Definition (DTD) (for
example, the formal definition of a
particular version of HTML). In the
serialized form of the document, it
manifests as a short string of markup
that conforms to a particular syntax.
The HTML layout engines in modern web
browsers perform DOCTYPE "sniffing" or
"switching", wherein the DOCTYPE in a
document served as text/html
determines a layout mode, such as
"quirks mode" or "standards mode". The
text/html serialization of HTML5,
which is not SGML-based, uses the
DOCTYPE only for mode selection. Since
web browsers are implemented with
special-purpose HTML parsers, rather
than general-purpose DTD-based
parsers, they don't use DTDs and will
never access them even if a URL is
provided. The DOCTYPE is retained in
HTML5 as a "mostly useless, but
required" header only to trigger
"standards mode" in common browsers.
I decided to quote this text because it answers your question better than I would :). It is important that the absence of a DOCTYPE will trigger "quirks mode" in certain browsers.
It's all about the standards and yes, browsers handles code differently. That means, that all browsers should display the page equally. If no standard is specified, browser will interpret the page as it wants.
The declaration is not an XHTML tag; it is an instruction to the web browser about what version of the markup language the page is written in.
The declaration refers to a Document Type Definition (DTD). The DTD specifies the rules for the markup language, so that the browsers render the content correctly.
The DOCTYPE declaration is required to be compliant to SGML, the language HTML is an instance of.
The DOCTYPE declaration is used by some browsers to trigger different rendering modes.
Browser Modes
Back in the past, Browsers implemented CSS to their own rules.
Only over the years have Browser now adapted the W3C standards.
To make sure that websites rendered correctly various browsers, web developers had to implement CSS according to the wishes of these browsers. Thus, most websites used CSS in ways that didn’t quite match the specifications.
Therefore, when standards compliancy became important browser vendors faced a tough choice. Moving closer to the W3C specifications was the way to go, but if they’d just change the CSS implementations to match the standards perfectly, many websites would break to a greater or lesser extent. Existing CSS would start to show odd side effects if it were suddenly interpreted in the correct way.
So moving closer to standards compliance would cause problems. On the other hand, not moving closer to standards compliance would perpetuate the general confusion of the Browser Wars Era.
To this end all Browser had to start supporting both modes. Quirks mode for older designs and standard mode for new design.
Paraphrased from here: Quirks mode and strict mode
DocTypes
Choosing which mode to use requires a trigger, and this trigger was found in ’doctype switching’.
According to the standards, any (X)HTML document should have a doctype which tells the world at large which flavour of (X)HTML the document is using.
Taken from here too: Quirks mode and strict mode
Additonal Resources
Document Type Declaration
Quirks Mode on Wikipedia
Quirks mode and strict mode
Internet Explorer box model bug
The CSS box model
The doctype declaration should be the first thing in an HTML document, before the tag.
It isn't an HTML tag; it's an instruction to the web browser about what version of the markup language the page is written in.
It's getting simpler with HTML5: <!DOCTYPE html>
If you don't have that proper doctype, the browser won't know to use HTML5.
Because Doctype is the flag to tell how the browser should handle the page.
For example :
HTML5 need this doctype<!DOCTYPE html>
If you remove this from the page, the any HTML5 capabilities inside your page won't be activated.
You can read more in http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/Doctype
I was on vacation without access to my good friend Internet Explorer, and I threw together a pretty complete web app. When I got home, I was surprised and encouraged to see that my site was working in IE... until I threw in any sort of valid doctype. I know it isn't best practice to throw browsers into quirks mode, or it wouldn't be called quirks mode, but I guess my question is... what are the practical ramifications of having a 'quirks mode' site? Is it necessary or even worth it to painstakingly slave away to correct the issues of which I am yet unaware, or can I leave it as is, functioning cross browser? Thanks.
If your site renders wrong in standards mode, but correct in quirks mode, chances are it's errornous. Some current browsers may fix your mistakes even in standard mode, but you have no idea about what future browsers will do with it. With standards mode, you can be absolutely sure that a valid site that looks fine in modern browsers will show up correctly.
Browsers are more interoperable, i.e., have the same behavior as each other, in the no-quirks mode compared to the quirks mode. The no-quirks mode is what most Web standards people and browser developers care about and consider and test. So it's more likely that you run into differences between browsers in quirks mode.
For example, in quirks mode, the body fills the viewport in WebKit/Blink, but does not in Gecko (I'm not sure about Edge). In no-quirks mode, body height works the same in all browsers.
(There's one counter-example, though, where browsers agree in quirks mode but not in no-quirks mode: body being the "viewport scrolling element" for scrollTop etc.)
Some versions of IE (8 and 9?) deliberately had less features in their quirks modes (e.g. the canvas element). So if you care about IE and want to be able to use the features IE actually supports, just not in quirks mode, then that would be another reason to not use quirks mode.
Finally, and maybe obviously, you're likely to run into more "weird" behavior that is the quirks themselves, like color and some other stuff not inheriting into table elements, that top and bottom margins collapse more, IDs and classes being case-insensitive, and so on.
Declaring a proper doctype is technically required for HTML validation by W3; however, lots of people leave their code un-doctyped for browsers to use Quirks mode instead. I've done this many times and it usually works out fine; however, you run the risk of browsers not interpreting your code correctly.
In other words, the cross-browser functionality you speak of could very easily break down into cross-browser hell without valid doctype declarations.
A.k.a., it's up to you as to how robust your site needs to be.
Quirks mode typically is the browsers attempt at fixing your errors in order to render correctly, however it's important to remember that if your site renders in standards compliant mode it will likely render ok with future browsers (at least for the time being).
I am working on a project which requires IE6 compatibility. Unfortunately, IE6 and IE7 do not support standards mode. Because of this, I am tempted target almost standards in for all browsers and just ignore standards mode completely, so that I am only targeting browsers running in the same standards mode. I figure that because XHTML transitional is so popular, almost standards most is guaranteed to be supported for a long time to come. Is this a good idea?
No, this is not a good idea.
Its not a good idea because eventually IE6 will be obsolete (sooner rather than later) and you will have a messed up site where you have to jump through hoops to get it to look halfway decent.
A better solution is to use progressive enhancement, in a nutshell support the minimum you need for IE6 and give the modern standards following browsers the goodies.
With progressive enhancement you still get your support for IE6 but you're left with a standards based website that is easier to maintain and develop further.
Using "almost standards" mode is dumbing down other browsers for the sake of IE. IE6/7 doesn't support a standards mode because it's incompetent. You should never write markup aiming at incompetence. Write modern markup with a strict doctype and use "conditional comments" to hack and beat IE into the best compliance you can get out of that thing or you will be doomed to a world of darkness and hurt.
Roughly 40% of the user base of my company's software uses IE6 (down from ~60% a couple years ago).
Our master pages have the XHTML 1.1 doctype set. I do all my design work using the latest version of Firefox and then once I have it all working how I want, I test in IE6 using the App Compatibility VMs for Virtual PC that MS releases, and make any necessary changes to my CSS that IE6 requires.
Most of the time I can just use slightly different CSS and don't have to resort to hacks, although sometimes I still do. But the hacks don't affect other browsers, since they're IE6 specific. I haven't gone to the length of using browser-specific CSS files yet, cause the extent of my IE6 hacks are something on the order of 10 lines out of ~1500 lines of CSS. My modified CSS to "support" IE6 still renders fully standards-compliant in Firefox.
EDIT: thanks to Rob's comment I'll be changing my doctype to "HTML 4.01 Strict with system identifier" (provided testing shows that it doesn't break anything). That Quirks Mode chart on Wikipedia shows my current doctype (XHTML 1.1 with system identifier and without XML declaration) results in the same render modes.
Everything I said above still applies, though. I code for standards-compliance in the latest version of Firefox (the Web Developer add-on is my friend) and then "make IE work" without breaking standards-compliance in Firefox.