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Doctype

A quicky really. I’ve been using HTML5 for a while.

But it’s kinda lazy really. XHTML no way (what’s its future?) so back to HTML4.1 then?

Just a poll really: what about you?

 

Discussion (13)

 

If you mean whether you use new, HTML5 only features (such as structural tags) then most of the time. Not sure what you mean by “lazy”.

If you just mean the doctype, then all the time, as it triggers standards mode across all browsers. You could write HTML4 using the doctype (or XHTML for that matter).

There’s nothing to stop yourself being strict when writing HTML5, it’s just that it doesn’t make any difference to validation. This is a good thing, I think.

 

It’s not lazy.

The HTML5 doctype causes all browsers (even IE6) to render in standards mode. Therefore, it is legit and has already made XHTML obsolete—regardless of whether or not you use any HTML5 tags.

I use the HTML5 doctype but basically code in HTML4. It works just fine. We don’t build for IE6 anymore but anything newer than IE7 renders perfectly.

 

Yeah that’s basically what I mean. I don’t really use HTML5-specific code yet (that’s what a lot of people seem to confuse; I do use some new CSS3). And I code clean but have stopped bothering with validation (except to check, not validate per se). 5 doctype with as strict as possible 4 seems a good option. Was wondering how anal I should be to make it all “as it should”. Weird times.

 

5 is designed to be flexible, so 5 doctype plus HTML 4.01 is just fine. I personally find being able to use article, section et al makes for more logical markup as div, div, div lacks structure, and is harder to scan. But there’s no real benefit to using structural tags at the moment (the javascript API is a different matter), and IE needs a js boost to style them. Also, I find Google a bit flaky with <time>

Still worth validating, I think, as it can help identify rendering problems.

Being consistent with case, attributes etc. will make your markup more manageable.

 

This is interesting since I am using a wordpress theme and I need to use the <video> tag in html5 and I was wondering if just changing the doctype would do it for me. I was also concerned about it breaking some things as I am new to html5 and any backward compatibility that it may have.

I think I am ok with moving ahead with that then.

 
 
 
 
 
 

I’ve been using modernizr on a couple of projects so I can start to familiarise myself with the new HTML5 elements (header, footer, article, section etc), and I haven’t noticed any problems or performance issues at all.

I have also used the video tag on a website to provide video for iOS visitors.

I found the HTML5 boilerplate a useful tool for making the transition.

I think using the HTML5 doctype is fine (it certainly doesn’t hurt!), but it doesn’t give you any HTML5 goodness. Since IE7 and IE8 will be kicking around for some years yet, I think that tools like Modernizr are the only practical way to start using HTML5 in the near future.

@blok I use the Total Validator plugin for Firefox, with the Total Validator software installed locally so that I can validate HTML when testing locally. Works really well.

@blok The whole 2022 thing is of course total bogus. To put it in perspective, the CSS 2.1 spec only became a candidate for recommendation in April 2009, and we’ve all been using CSS 2.1 in production websites for about 10 years! From what I understand the HTML5 spec is expected to be finalized in 2012.

 
 

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