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by rimantas 4248 days ago
No browser ever paid any attention to the version of the HTML specified. The only use for DOCTYPE—and the reason it remains in HTML5—is "doctype switching", i.e. different rendering modes are triggered in the browsers. You can use "html", "html5", "html6.2" or "foobarbaz" as your doctype, the effect will be the same—they will all trigger standards compliant mode.
3 comments
pbhjpbhj 4248 days ago
>'You can use "html", "html5", "html6.2" or "foobarbaz" as your doctype, the effect will be the same—they will all trigger standards compliant mode.' //

You're wrong if your asserting that any doctype produces the same results globally but it probably doesn't matter unless you're targeting legacy UA.

See e.g. "Appendix: Handling of Some Doctypes in text/html" at https://hsivonen.fi/doctype/ or Eric Meyer's http://archive.oreilly.com/pub/a/network/2000/04/14/doctype/... (for MacIE5 ... like I said it probably won't matter!).

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gsnedders 4247 days ago
Speaking of IE/Mac, that's the reason why the HTML DOCTYPE now is `<!doctype html>`. If it hadn't been for IE/Mac, it'd be `<!doctype>`.
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scriptproof 4247 days ago
Maybe but if you use real DOCTYPE such as <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"> then you will see huge difference in rendering.
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kibibu 4248 days ago
I have vague memories of Frames not working under the HTML4 Strict doctype
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