[whatwg] [html5] tags, elements and generated DOM

Olav Junker Kjær olav at olav.dk
Fri Apr 8 08:38:54 PDT 2005


Petrazickis wrote:
> Wouldn't authors need to use an HTML4 or an XHTML doctype specifically 
> to trigger the standards mode in IE6? In that case, specifying a doctype 
> of our own would be counter-productive to the goal of compatibility with 
> IE6.

Standards mode is triggered by any doctype tag, except some specific 
doctypes which is defined as triggering quirks mode.

More specificly, it seems that standards mode is triggered by the string 
<!DOCTYPE in the beginning of the document. It doesn't even have to be 
closed :-)

If the <!DOCTYPE is preceded by anything other than whitespace, quirks 
mode is used. (That way, quirks mode can be forced on any document by 
preceding the doctype with a comment.)

regards
Olav Junker Kjær




More information about the whatwg mailing list