As the name implies, a doctype declaration specifies the language or, more specifically, the DTD
(Document Type Definition) in use for the file that follows. To validate their page, many authors include
doctype statements like the following:
This doctype is inserted by default when Dreamweaver creates a new static HTML page.
The latest??”in fact, the last??”version of HTML recommended by the W3C is version 4.01.
After this version, the W3C recommended the switch to XHTML.
Recent browser versions inspect the doctype element in order to determine how the page should be rendered.
Engaging in a practice known as doctype switching, these browsers (Internet Explorer 5.x and Safari
1.x or higher on the Macintosh, Internet Explorer 6 on Windows, and Netscape 6 or higher) work in two
modes: strict and regular. When a browser is in strict mode, a page must be well-formed and validate without
error to be rendered properly. Strict rendering is more consistent across browsers. The regular mode is
far looser and more forgiving in how the page is coded; however, the page is more likely to be rendered differently
in the varying browser versions.
You can ensure that your pages are rendered in the regular mode in a number of ways:
n Do not include a doctype declaration at all.
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